Bunohan
Director: Dan Said Run Time: 97 min. Format: Digital Rating: R Release Year: 2011 Language: Malay with English Subtitles
Starring: Faizal Hussein, Pekin Ibrahim, Zahiril Adzim
Malaysian director Dain Said’s second feature film centers around a complicated and violent family living in the small village of Bunohan (translation: murder).
Bunohan: Return to Murder deals with family histories, rural isolation, and the inevitability of development through the complicated evolution of three estranged brothers – a kickboxer, a businessman, and an assassin. Murky, violent, and a little fantastical (mixed in are talking birds and a strange ghost-women), the brothers in Bunhan fight for their lives in a “dark web of deceit, regret and murder.” It’s definitely not your conventional Asian crime film.
Film fact: though it was not short-listed, Bunohan was only the second Malaysian film to ever be nominated for the Academy Awards’ Best Foreign Language Film by the The National Film Development Corporation Malaysia.