Held in conjunction with the Hong Kong International Film Festival and Hong Kong Filmart, the Asian Film Awards celebrated their second edition by handing three top honors to Lee Chang-dong's Secret Sunshine, according to Variety. The film won awards for Best Asian Film, Best Director, and Best Actress (Jeon Do-yeon). Secret Sunshine began receiving accolades at Cannes last year and the positive press has never let up as it's played the festival circuit worldwide. Sad to say, it has yet to be acquired for US distribution, so if you want to see this highly-acclaimed family drama, you'll have to pony up for an import DVD from overseas.

Best Actor prize went to the great Tony Leung Chiu-wai for Ang Lee's Lust, Caution. Our own Jeffrey M. Anderson didn't like the film overall, but was mighty impressed by Leung's performance: "In one great sequence, he reacts to a bit of news only with his eyes and then his feet, and it's an astonishing bit of acting." Joan Chen (Twin Peaks, Saving Face) won as Best Supporting Actress for Mainland Chinese arthouse flick The Sun Also Rises. Sun Honglei received Best Supporting Actor award for his work in Mongol, a movie that Picturehouse will open in limited release on June 6.

Other films that were awarded include Mad Detective (Screenwriter), Help Me Eros (Cinematography), Eye in the Sky (Editor), and The Assembly (Visual Effects). India's Vishal Dadlani and Shekhar Ravjiani shared the Best Composer award. The awards are decided upon by an 18-member jury composed of critics, festival programmers, and other film experts.

The strike isn't the only thing that has been cooking up lately. Check out all the international indie deals that Variety threw up recently:

• Oldboy helmer Park Chan-Wook has not only been cooking up some machine love with I'm a Cyborg, But That's OK. He's also got Bakjwi (Evil Live) on the way -- a modern-day bloodsucking vampire story, and Variety reports that CJ Entertainment has pre-sold French and Russian rights to the pic, which hopefully means North America will get some bloody rights soon. Other current CJ deals include Secret Sunshine, Shadows in the Palace, and Love Now.
• On the more Bolly side of things, Variety has posted that India indie distributor Indo-Overseas Films has picked up some movie rights. First up is the romcom Chocolate, directed by Mayavi helmer Shafi, and written by Sachi and Sethu. Ah, the ease of one-word, short names! The other film that Indo-Overseas has nabbed is Power Kids, but that currently seems to be lurking beyond the reach of the Internet.
• There's also a few action flicks coming out of Hong Kong. Variety reports that Rialto has gotten Aussie and Kiwi rights to both award-winner Dante Lam's upcoming flick Sniper, and Assassins -- Soi Cheang's latest action film. I don't know Cantonese, but maybe one of you, out there, can tell me if that's the same as The Grudge detective Ryo Ishibashi's Shamo? The flicks are also reaching Israel, the ex-Yugoslavian region, and Turkey, so maybe, again, we'll hear North American rights soon.

Two more countries have officially tossed their hats in the ring for the Foreign-Language Oscar, according to separate stories in Variety, and both selections are screening at the Toronto International Film Festival. South Korea's entry is Lee Chang-dong's Secret Sunshine. The well-regarded drama debuted at Cannes, where Jeon Do-yeon won the award for best actress. As the Variety story notes, she plays "a young widow who moves from Seoul to start over in a provincial city." Variety says that Secret Sunshine was selected over Kim Ki-duk's Breath (also a Cannes selection) and May 18, a box-office hit based on real events. In addition to its screenings in Toronto, Secret Sunshine will also be playing at the New York Film Festival and at AFI Fest in Los Angeles, but does not yet have US distribution.

Another Variety story covers the general wariness of buyers toward the films on display in Toronto, but also reports that Lebanon officially selected Nadine Labaki's directorial debut Caramel as their Oscar entrant. According to Variety, the film opened in France and Lebanon in August and is already on course to become the top-grossing Lebanese release in those two territories. Caramel is a romantic comedy revolving around the lives of five women, set in and around a beauty salon in Beirut. The trailer at the official French site looks low-key and glossy. Jason Anderson at Eye Weekly called it "a Lebanese chick flick" that's "usually as fetching as it is familiar." Roadside Attractions has US distribution rights.

With hundreds of titles playing at the Toronto festival, which ones will emerge as critical or popular favorites? One way to build popular word of mouth is by screening selected titles at other fall festivals. Festival buzz often leads to sales for films without distribution, and that same buzz can increase awareness of films in advance of a theatrical release.

For example, this week AFI Fest announced another 15 titles, according to indieWIRE, of which 11 are screening in Toronto. Bruce MacDonald's The Tracey Fragments and Paprika Steen's With Your Permission will have their US Premieres at the fest, while other buzz titles include Telluride fave Juno, the animated Persepolis, the Romanian 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (which was pulled earlier this year from the Los Angeles Film Festival), biopic The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Tamara Jenkins' The Savages and Austrian Oscar entry The Counterfeiters. As an Asian film fan, I'm excited to see Hao Hsiao-hsien's Flight of the Red Balloon and Lee Chang-dong's Secret Sunshine in the lineup. Two documentaries will world premiere: Public Enemy: Welcome to the Terrordome and 1000 Journals. The fest will open with the North American Premiere of Robert Redford's Lions for Lambs; it runs from November 1-11 in Los Angeles, California.

Starting in less than two weeks, Fantastic Fest is filled with exciting titles for genre fans -- I'm going and my schedule is already overflowing. They've just announced their opening night film will be George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead, with director Romero in person. The film premiered Friday night as part of Toronto's Midnight Madness program. Other recently-added films include Flash Point (another Midnight Madness title), The Backwoods (starring Gary Oldman) and Nacho Vigilando's Timecrimes. Look for a BIG Cinematical preview coming next week. The craziness begins September 20 and lasts until September 27 in Austin, Texas.

Did you get yours in the mail? Last year the complete line-up for the New York Film Festival was announced in August, but this year the early invites have already leaked out, courtesy of Scott Foundas. He's the lead critic and film editor for the LA Weekly, his reviews appear throughout the Village Voice alt-weekly chain, and he contributes reviews to Variety. Oh, and he's one of the two new members of the selection committee for the festival -- the other is J. Hoberman, longtime Voice critic. In a videotaped discussion with fellow writers David Poland (Movie City News and The Hot Blog), Anne Thompson (Variety) and Jeremy Smith (Chud), Foundas mentions that the Coen Brothers' No Country For Old Men, Korean director Lee Chang-dong's Secret Sunshine and Romanian drama 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, along with two other unidentified films, have been invited. Foundas "thinks" that all five are confirmed to play at the festival this fall.

None of the choices are surprising. All three were highly-praised when they premiered at Cannes last month, with awards presented to South Korean actress Jeon Do-yeon, the female lead of Secret Sunshine, and 4 Months (the Palme D'Or). In an interesting side note, Foundas also claims that 4 Months was pulled from the Los Angeles Film Festival, where it was scheduled to have its North American Premiere later this month, because the Telluride Film Festival, held over the Labor Day weekend, wanted the premiere.

Because of the New York Film Festival's prestige and press coverage, each spot in the line-up is highly coveted, especially by arthouse distributors who feel that having one of their films selected gives them an advantage in a ferociously tight market. The festival describes itself as "highly competitive with an average of 28 feature films" selected each year. Evidently only 23 invitations remain to be sent.