Scene Report: Asian Film Festival of Dallas turns 25 at Angelika
AFFD’s 25th edition runs July 23–26 at Angelika Film Center Dallas, opening with Yeon Sang-ho’s Colony and closing with a Train to Busan anniversary night. Texas readers get a full Asian cinema weekend without flying to NYAFF.
The Goldscene Desk
While San Diego and New York soak up most of the July film-festival airtime, Dallas has its own anniversary week. The Asian Film Festival of Dallas turns 25 this weekend at Angelika Film Center in Mockingbird Station, July 23 through 26, with tickets and the full grid on asianfilmdallas.com.
That is the Scene Report: one of the South’s longest-running Asian cinema festivals is not a nostalgia brochure. It is a four-day Angelika plan with a high-profile opener, late-night repertory, and a closing title that still moves a room.
Opening night and the anniversary loop
Thursday opens with Yeon Sang-ho’s Colony at 6:45 p.m., the same zombie thriller that already opened NYAFF and is heading to a wider North American theatrical date later this summer. For the Jun Ji-hyun circuit read, see our Colony soft-power piece. After the screening, the opening-night party lands at AKAI inside Musume Dallas. Later the same night, Takashi Miike’s Ichi the Killer (18+) returns as a 25th-anniversary late show, the kind of cult booking that echoes AFFD’s early years.
Saturday’s centerpiece is Japan’s Never After Dark. Sunday closes with Train to Busan at 7:30 p.m., timed to the film’s tenth anniversary, with a closing party at The Highland Hotel. Between those poles, the weekend mixes premieres, shorts blocks, and filmmaker Q&As, including documentaries Year of the Cat and Diamond Diplomacy.
Our take
Mye Hoang and Stephen Carlton founded AFFD in 2002 so Dallas could see Asian cinema without waiting for a coastal booking. Twenty-five years later, the useful move is still local: pick opening night for Colony, late night for Miike, or Sunday for the Train to Busan reunion, and stop pretending you need a New York hotel to keep up. If you are mapping the wider late-July culture weekend, fold this into the weekend map as the Texas film lane.
