Hollywood can take a break. Cannes can try again. It?s time to lap up the best of Asian cinema. With Pather Panchali celebrating 50 years, it?s not surprising that the package of this year?s Kolkata Film Festival shifts the spotlight to some new forces in Asian cinema that are set to swing the celluloid tide to this part of the world.

More than playing second fiddle to the big film studios, they take their time and produce their cinema independently, never compromising their dreams. Iranian film-maker Alireza Ghanie is one such Asian auteur, who took three years to make his debut feature The Wind Game for want of money.

Ghanie?s film is a reflection of his own life. The painter-musician-film-maker was born in Iran but moved to Austria at the age of 14 and his constant effort to return to his roots finds voice in the main character of his film.

?Film to me is a search field where you ask questions and then try and find the answers. Searching is not just about geographical space but also inside the mind. I couldn?t go back to my own country for 17 years, making me almost a stranger there.?

Speaking about the proliferation of Asian cinema, Ghanie stressed on the focus on culture. ?Cultures of Asian countries are dependent on and also borrow from each other. It?s not wrong to be influenced or inspired by something or someone but one shouldn?t follow others. The new film-makers in Iran are too influenced by certain figures of Asian cinema and try to copy their styles. They don?t even shoot with proper scripts, which are like the bones of the body as far as a film goes.?

While Ghanie is a completely self-taught film-maker, Korean cinema?s new face Kim Hak-Soon studied cinema in the US but returned to his homeland to give shape to his celluloid dreams. His debut feature Rewind (picture above), shown at this year?s festival, explores the attempt at aloneness of a just-divorced man.

?It tries to relate an individual with society. My new film, too, will examine the relationship of a woman and the society she lives in. It?s important for us Asian film-makers to delve into the intricacies of society and find out the truth,? says Hak-Soon.

Rewind hasn?t found favour with the Korean masses but has been a big hit at the festivals having travelled to prestigious venues like Edinburgh International Film Festival and is slated to be screened in Cairo and in Slovakia.

Hak-Soon is very clear about the prospects for his films. ?We can?t just think about audiences. Then we won?t be able to make movies at all. Finding private producers for films like mine is next to impossible. But we have to make our kind of cinema, which is real and which looks at society in its true light.?

Finally, it?s back to Ray. ?What he did so many years ago with Pather Panchali and the Apu trilogy is to look at the world in the most objective of ways and make his actors speak in a human voice. Asian cinema needs to keep doing that,? Hak-Soon signs off.