KUALA LUMPUR: The Garden Of Evening Mists won Best Feature Film at the Asian Academy Creative Awards (AACA) gala show, held online yesterday.
The film beat four other films nominated in the category — Mariposa (from Indonesia), Stranger's House (Myanmar), Hello Love Goodbye (the Philippines), and Dear Orange (Taiwan).
The film adaption of the critically-acclaimed novel of the same name by Malaysian Tan Twan Eng, is produced by Astro Shaw and HBO Asia with the support from the National Film Development Corporation Malaysia (Finas) in association with CJ Entertainment.
Helmed by award-winning Taiwanese director Tom Lin and adapted by Scottish BAFTA-winning screenwriter Richard Smith, it boasts a star-studded international cast including Malaysian actress Sinje Lee (The Eye), Japanese actor Hiroshi Abe (After the Storm), Taiwanese actress Sylvia Chang (Love Education), British actors David Oakes (Cold Skin) and Julian Sands (The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo), and Scottish actor John Hannah (The Mummy).
It tells the story of Teoh Yun Ling (played by Sinje Lee) who, embittered from atrocities of World War II in Malaya, seeks solace in the rolling hills of Cameron Highlands. There, she discovers Yugiri, the only Japanese garden in Malaya and its mysterious owner Nakamura Aritomo (played by Hiroshi Abe). He reluctantly accepts her as an apprentice so that she can build a garden in homage of her beloved sister who perished in a labour camp. As Yugiri reveals secrets of its own, Yun Ling and Aritomo embark on a forbidden love affair.
Astro Shaw & Nusantara head Raja Jastina Raja Arshad thanked AACA jury members for the recognition.
"Our gratitude also goes out to the novelist Tan Twan Eng who won the 2012 Man Asian Literary Prize for the novel which the film had been adapted from. Thanks to Richard Smith for the perfect script, to the cast Lee Sin-je, Hiroshi Abe and Sylvia Chang," she said in a news report yesterday.
Filmed in Malaysia, the two-hour film is in English, Mandarin, Japanese and Bahasa Malaysia.