When the San Francisco-born, Hong Kong-raised director Doris Yeung moved to Amsterdam in 2002, she immediately started looking for ways to contribute to Asian culture in The Netherlands positively.
The festival was immediately lauded for the way it managed to intimately introduce new audiences to the world of Asian cinema, positively reshaping the Dutch collective consciousness about the continent in the process.
In 2006, Yeung created the CinemAsia FilmLAB program to give young Asian talent the opportunity to make their own stories into films and to enable them to see their realities reflected on screen come true.
2012 marked the year that the CinemAsia Film Festival went annual, having outgrown its biannual programming and locations like De Ketelhuis.
The selected filmmakers receive a small budget to make a documentary or a short film that is presented at the festival.
It is also a possibility to improve the diversity within the film sector and to stimulate cross-cultural collaboration, knowledge share and networking.
The competition brings films from both new and established talents that showcases a strong filmmaking vision, shifts cinematic boundaries and/or presents subjects with groundbreaking effects.
In 2019 was the year to commemorate the centennial of women's suffrage and the prize was for the best film directed or co-directed by a female director.
In each edition of the festival is a special LGBTQ+ program where visitors can participate in discussions, exhibitions, presentations and workshops about the queer community.
During the year CinemAsia organize different theme events[3] to give the audience the chance to enjoy Asian cinema.