Japanese Films at the Berlin International Film Festival 2023

The 72nd Berlin International Film Festival will be taking place from February 16 to 26.

What are the Japanese films programmed so far?

An Interview with Kasho Iizuka, Director of ANGRY SON [Osaka Asian Film Festival 2022]

 

Starting with his 2011 Pia Film Festival Special Jury Prize-winning autobiographical feature debut, Our Future, Kasho Iizuka has focused on the lives of people who don’t fit neatly into Japanese society.

Iizuka’s latest feature Angry Son is his second 2022 release following his transgender relationship drama The World for the Two of Us. It tackles immigration and mixed-race experiences through the prism of a single-parent family where the titular angry son is gay Filipino-Japanese high-schooler Jungo (Kazuki Horike) who lives unhappily with his vivacious Filipina mother Reina (singer and actress GOW) in a city located in Gunma Prefecture. A search for his father forces them to face the prejudice they have experienced and reconnect in a touching, funny, and fiery drama.

Cultural faux pas, prejudice, and healing happen after a lot of patience and empathy help characters get to understand each other. Iizuka explores various social issues such as harmonising racial and sexual identities by skilfully wrapping them up in a strong family drama where the characters are sympathetically dealt with. Such was the impact of the film that it won the Most Promising Talent Award at the 2022 Osaka Asian Film Festival and it has been selected for Nippon connection and this attention is richly deserved as the film is so well made and full of substance as it presents a hopeful picture of a Japan that is becoming more diverse.

Where did the story come from? What drives director Kasho Iizuka? He took part in an interview where he explained lots of things that informed Angry Son. The interview was translated by Takako Pocklington.

Chiba Film Festival Regular Screening Vol.1 (January 22nd): “In the Distance” and “Haruhara-san’s Recorder”

Here’s a great way to get closer to Japanese indie cinema!

Chiba Film Festival will hold an event running under the title Regular Screening Vol.1 at the Chiba City Lifelong Learning Center on January 22nd. As the title suggests, this is the first of a series of film screening events that will highlight independent films. There will be two indie films available to watch with the filmmakers in attendance!!!

Details below on the titles below:

JFF+ INDEPENDENT CINEMA: A Selection of Japanese Independent Films to Stream in 2022/23

Over the last few years. the Japan Foundation has set up opportunities for people around the world to watch Japanese films via streaming via Japanese Film Festival+. This year, they have teamed up with mini theatres (small independent cinemas) across Japan to programme 12 indie films for people to stream online for free.

From December 15th, people can go to the website JFF+ INDEPENDENT CINEMA to watch independent films selected by the managers of mini theatres from across Japan. This is a novel way to programme films and it offers an insight into the mini theatre ecosystem which supports Japanese filmmakers and the cultural life of local communities – the majority of films on my weekend trailer posts get played at these small venues.

The films are available to many countries outside of Japan and the films and the theatres that select them are reveal something of specific regional culture. There is ample background on each of the titles and the program is going to be complemented by interview videos with directors and actors, and interview articles with managers of the mini-theatres to give you more of an insight into the films. If you click on the links for the films below, you can read information already.

The films will be screened over two periods:

– First term: 6 films streamed from December 15, 2022, to March 15, 2023,
– Second term: 6 films streamed March 15, 2023, to June 15 2023,

Check the website for more

Some of these are bang up-to-date titles while others are nearly a decade old so you’re going to get some views on how films have fared over time. Some directors even give advice on how to watch the films! There are dramas, documentaries, and experimental works. I’ve only seen a couple of them but can highly recommend them (links to reviews and an interview included) while the others I have heard good things about.

How can one stream the films? When the streaming period is active, just go to the website and register online by clicking on the ‘Watch for Free’ button to jump to the streaming page and sign up to create an account via your email address.

There’s the opportunity to sign up for a newsletter and offer feedback and so you can drop a message to give your thoughts and thanks for the free films. Feedback always helps and it looks like the mini theatre managers want to hear from viewers!

What are the films on offer? 

An Interview with Fumito Fujikawa, Director of The Light of Spring [Osaka Asian Film Festival 2022/Five Flavours Film Festival 2022]

With a background in both film and anthropology, Fumito Fujikawa’s career encompasses both documentary and drama and sometimes blurs the line between the two.

He first came to international attention with his debut feature film The Name of the Whale, a family drama shot in the director’s home prefecture of Hiroshima and centred on a junior high school boy searching for fossils while his family and friendship circle undergo changes. Critics noted its combination of documentary-like delivery of drama and the use of a partially non-professional cast and child actors and this earned it the moniker of a dramamentary, a style so effective at enraputring viewers in its world that it won the film the Audience Award at the 2015 Pia Film Festival. It went on to be screened internationally at festivals such as Vancouver, Hong Kong, and Taipei.

His next film was Supa Layme, a documentary shot in the Peruvian Andes following a family of six tending to llamas, sheep and working the land. It went on to win awards including taking best film in the Peruvian competition of the Lima Alterna Festival (you can read an interview with the director about that film here).

For his third feature film, The Light of Spring, Fujikawa returned to Japan and shot a work in Tokyo with a real-life family of four acting out the separation of the parents and children during the Covid-19 pandemic. Drawing directly from The Name of the Whale, he recruited two of that film’s actors, Yuki Hirabuki, nee Kimura, and her husband Masana Hirabuki. They brought their two children, five-year-old boy Shui and baby girl Chikasa. Together they convincingly relay a realistic story of a family falling apart, the quiet tensions and desperation between the parents affecting the children until a resolution of sorts is reached.

The Light of Spring played at Osaka Asian Film Festival 2022 in March and is currently playing at Five Flavours Film Festival in Poland where it can be viewed online in Poland (details here) until December 04th. At the festival, it won The Special Mention for the International People’s Jury award. To find out more on the background of the film, this interview was conducted with the director.

Thanks go out to Fumito Fujikawa for doing this interview and providing lots of background, to Takako Pocklington for translating between English and Japanese, and to the staff of Osaka Asian Film Festival staff for making the interview happen.

An Interview with Sae Suzuki, Director of Strangers [Osaka Asian Film Festival 2022]

Sae Suzuki’s career as a filmmaker began when she enrolled in the Department of Body Expression at Rikkyo University and studied directing under director/critic Kunitoshi Manda. She then went on to study film directing under Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Nobuhiro Suwa at the Graduate School of Film and New Media, Tokyo University of the Arts and her graduation film My Identity (2019) was selected for the  Busan International Film Festival 2019 and Japan Cuts 2020. She is currently making films as a freelancer and her latest work Strangers played at Osaka Asian Film Festival 2022.

Strangers is a melancholic but hopeful short film about people wrestling with experiences of sexual harassment, negative thoughts on gender and sex, and suffering in silence. Manami Usamaru of Sisterhood (2019) fame plays Yukie, a dental nurse from a rural town who flees her workplace with the clinic’s cash following sexual assault from her boss. A train transition leads her and us to Tokyo where she can be free to do as she pleases and so she changes her appearance and personality and meets up with a guy named Minato (Akihiro Yamamoto) who offers her day of non-judgemental companionship that allows her to process her negative feelings. It turns out that he has trauma of his own and together, as strangers, they offer each other hope for a new life.

The film comes at an interesting time as people in Japan take to SNS to talk more openly about difficult subjects like discrimination and harassment. Through excellent use of visuals and performers, Sae Suzuki allows audiences to enter into these difficult topics with a very thoughtful and beautiful film.

I would like to thank Sae Suzuki for delivering this interview in both English and Japanese and the efforts of Osaka Asian Film Festival staff for facilitating the interview.

The Inter College Animation Festival 2022 – A Japanese Student Animator Showcase – Online and Region-Free!

From September 26th to October 02nd, people around the world can watch a selection of works that have been programmed for The Inter College Animation Festival 2022.

This is the 20th anniversary of the event and 30 schools are participating, the largest number ever. There are an exciting and varied selection of short films and music videos done in many styles, from stop motion to motion capture, 2D anime style and mixing animation with live-action.

You can view the online ones here.

Japanese Films at the Vancouver International Film Festival 2022

The Vancouver International Film Festival 2022 runs from September 29th to October 09th and the line-up looks great. There are a grip of Japanese feature films which will be screened. I’m also throwing in two Korean films that have been winning awards and plaudits – potential festival attendees will want to watch these!

Here’s the round-up of Japanese films.

Japanese Films at the San Sebastian International Film Festival 2022 (September 16th-24th)

This year’s San Sebastian International Film Festival runs from September 16th to the 24th and they have announced their selection of films which includes forthcoming features and a grip of shorts. Take a look!

Japanese Films at the Toronto International Film Festival 2022 (September 08th-18th)

This year’s Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 08th to the 18th and they have announced their programme which has a great variety of screenings. There are two Japanese entries and quite a few Korean ones. I’ve listed the Japanese ones and a few other standouts (for me, at least). Take a look!