News

The 25th edition marks a return in-person after being cancelled last year.

Han Yan’s Love Never Ends is set to open the 25th Shanghai International Film Festival (Siff), which has also revealed the nominations for its Golden Goblet Awards.

The romance drama is adapted from a cartoon of the same name created by Kang Full. Ni Dahong, Kara Wai, Tony Leung Ka-Fai and Cecilia Yip play two elderly couples who show it is never too late to love.

Director Han previously directed 2015’s Go Away Mr. Tumor and 2020’s A Little Red Flower. Love Never Ends is set for...

The Shanghai International Film Festival unveiled the competition selection for its 25th-anniversary edition Monday, featuring a lineup heavy on local Chinese titles, as well as substantial inclusion from Iran and Japan. Notably, though, festival organizers chose not to include a single film from the U.S. movie industry in their 2023 competition lineup.

The 2023 Shanghai festival, running June 9-18, will be the first version of the event that’s easily accessible to the global film industry since the Covid-19 pandemic began in early 2020. Last year, the festival was canceled in the wake of Shanghai’s monthlong Covid-19 lockdown and the government’s strict travel restrictions at the time. The festival was held the previous two years, but it became an almost entirely domestic Chinese affair, as flights in and out of China were hard to come by at the time (and all travelers had to endure lengthy and expensive hotel quarantines...

The 25th Shanghai International Film Festival, June 9 to 18, has unveiled the titles in contention for awards in its four main feature-length sections: main competition, Asian New Talent, Animation film and documentary. These are eligible for the festival’s prestigious Golden Goblet Awards, winners of which will be announced at the Shanghai Grand Theater on the evening of June 17.

While Siff remains the only mainland China festival to be accredited as a so-called A-list event by the International Federation of Film Producers (Fiapf), its selections are largely separate and distinct from those at other major international festivals.

While the lineup includes nine mainland Chinese titles, two from Hong Kong and five from Iran, there are, for instance, no films that hail from the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand or South Korea.

Feature Film Competition

“All Ears” Dir. Liu Jiayin (China)

“Dust To Dust” Dir. Jonathan Li (China)

“Good Autumn, Mommy” Dir.

Shanghai International Film Festival (Siff) has unveiled the major competition selections for its 25th edition (June 9-18), which will be the first to be held in a fully physical format with international guests since before the pandemic.

The festival’s Golden Goblet Awards comprises five sections – Main Competition, Asian New Talent, Animation Film, Documentary Film and Short Film. Winners will be announced at a ceremony in the Shanghai Grand Theater on June 17.

Siff’s main competition will screen 12 films, including Mom, Is That You?!, from Japanese veteran filmmaker Yoji Yamada; European titles including Muyeres, from Spanish director Marta Lallana, and The Chapel, from Belgium’s Dominique Deruddere; Indian director Haobam Paban Kumar’s Joseph’s Son; and three Chinese titles – Liu Jiayin’s All Ears, Johnathan Li’s Dust To Dust and Chen Shizhong’s Good Autumn, Mommy.

Poland’s Jerzy Skolimowski is heading the jury for the main competition,...

The film received its world premiere in Rotterdam’s Big Screen Competition.

Japan’s Free Stone Productions has sold director Junji Sakamoto’s period drama Okiku And The World to Hugo East for China.

Set in mid-19th-century Edo (now known as Tokyo), the film follows two men who collect waste from tenement toilets to turn into fertilizer to sell on to farmers. When they meet schoolteacher Okiku, the daughter of a fallen samurai, romance ensues but not without its challenges.

Fresh off its world premiere at Rotterdam’s Big Screen Competition where the festival noted its “impish humour and...

We are happy to announce that the Skip City International D-Cinema Festival 2023 will celebrate its 20th anniversary edition from July 15th (Sat) to 23th (Sun), 2023 for 9 days at Skip City, which is an integrated institution for digital cinema production

(See: https://www.skipcity-dcf.jp/en/)

Submission period: January 25th, 2023 (Wed) – March 1st, 2023 (Wed)

We remain committed to discovering and nurturing new talent, with the aim of helping these filmmakers seize new business opportunities that have arisen in the changing landscape of the film industry. Now we call for works (60 min. or longer) that have been shot digitally and must be the director’s 1st, 2nd, or 3rd feature film from all over the world for the International Competition section.

Call for entries for the International Competition!!

Entry Deadline: Must be received by March 1st, 2023 (Wed)

Submit via FilmFreeway

https://filmfreeway.com/Skipcityinternationald-CinemaFESTIVAL (Online registration / Free)

Our International Competition welcomes you!

Festival revives Kurosawa Akira Award After 14 years.

Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF) is to honour Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and Japanese filmmaker Koji Fukada with its Kurosawa Akira Award and give its Lifetime Achievement Award to Kurosawa collaborator Nogami Teruyo.

It marks the first time the Kurosawa Akira Award will have been given in 14 years and is presented to filmmakers who are making extraordinary contributions to world cinema and are expected to help define the film industry’s future. Past recipients include Steven Spielberg, Yamada Yoji and Hou Hsiao Hsien.

The selection committee was made up of Yamada, Nakadai Tatsuya,...

Click here to read the full article.

The Tokyo International Film Festival revealed Friday that Mexican auteur Alejandro González Iñárritu and Japan’s own Koji Fukada will both receive the Kurosawa Akira Award at the event’s upcoming 35th edition later this month. The Tokyo festival decided to revive the honor in 2022 after a 14-year hiatus. Presented to filmmakers “who are making extraordinary contributions to world cinema and are expected to help define the film industry’s future,” the prize was previously awarded to film luminaries such as Steven Spielberg, Yoji Yamada and Taiwan’s Hou Hsiao-hsien.

This year’s honorees were chosen by a selection committee including director Yoji Yamada, acclaimed actor Tatsuya Nakadai, veteran actress Mieko Harada, film critic Saburo Kawamoto and Tokyo’s programming director Shozo Ichiyama.

The committee said it chose to award this year’s prize to Iñárritu, “as his debut film...

Festival will also host tributes to Taiwan’s Tsai Ming-liang and late director Shinji Aoyama.

US director Julie Taymor is to preside over the international competition jury of Tokyo International Film Festival, which has also announced plans to revive the Akira Kurosawa Award and host tribute screenings to Taiwan’s Tsai Ming-liang and late Japanese director Shinji Aoyama.

The festival has unveiled highlights of its 35th edition, which will run October 24 to November 2, ahead of the announcement of its full line up on September 21.

Taymor is known for directing features such as Frida, Titus, Across The Universe and The Glorias...

Click here to read the full article.

Two of the most anticipated Japanese films showing at the Venice Film Festival this year — Kei Ishikawa’s mystery drama A Man (2022) and a digitally remastered version of Yasujirō Ozu’s timeless classic A Hen in the Wind (1948) — share a uniquely curious distinction. The two Japanese films, separated by 74 years, were both written in the exact same room.

Ozu, one of the great masters of cinema history, famously spent long stretches of the 1940s and 1950s — his most productive period — residing and working at Chigasaki-kan, a small ryokan, or traditional Japanese inn, located on a quiet stretch of coast to the southwest of Tokyo. Ozu’s hideaway within the inn was its “niban no oheya,” or “room 2.” A modest space befitting an Ozu drama, the room was designed in Japan’s traditional washitsu style: tatami mats, a simple floor-level table and sliding shoji...

Member of the Berlinale Talents 2015, Yuichi Suita has also worked as an assistant cinematographer for Yoji Yamada’s films and has shot at least 10 shorts, a number of which have found their way to film festivals around the world. “But It Did Happen” is his latest one.

“But It Did Happen” is screening at Skip City International D-Cinema Festival

A woman opens the curtains just as the sun is rising and then proceeds on preparing two bento boxes. Reluctantly, she knocks the door of a room in her apartment, but receives no answer. The narrative style of the movie is expressed quite eloquently here, as the what is happening is implied rather than spoon-fed to the viewer: most probably, she is the mother of a hikikomori.

In the next scene, we see her sitting in her car by herself and then in a classroom where just two female students are studying.

translation by Lukasz Mankowski

Yoji Yamada is a Japanese film director most known for his Tora-san series consisting of 50 films shot over 25 years, making it the longest theatrical film series. Yamada made his directorial debut in 1961, and has since won the Japanese Academy Award for Best Picture four times, and has been nominated for dozens of other awards and honours at festivals worldwide. In 2019, more than two decades later, Yamada returned to the series with “Tora-san, Wish You Were Here” (2019).

On the occasion of “It’s a Flickering Life” screening at Toronto Japanese Film Festival, we speak with him about adapting Maha Harada’s novel, the Japanese studio system of the past and the differences with the current situation, Masaki Suda and Kenji Sawada, and nostalgia

“It’s a Flickering Life”screened at Toronto Japanese Film Festival

Why did you decide to adapt “Kinema no Kamisama” by popular multiple prize-winning...

Yoji Yamada’s 92nd film, which is based on the novel “Kinema no Kamisama” by popular multiple prize-winning novelist Maha Harada, inspired by her own family and experiences, is also a commemoration of Shochiku Films’ centennial, and particularly its trademark style, ‘Bright and Cheerful Shochiku Cinema’

“It’s a Flickering Life” is screening at Toronto Japanese Film Festival

Goh is an elderly man who has always had problems with gambling, forcing his wife Yoshiko and daughter, Ayumu, to bail him out a number of times, despite the fact that he had repeatedly promised not to do it again. This time, however, neither his daughter nor his wife are willing to help once more, with the latter taking over all his financial matters on her hands, and sending him back to deal with his second big passion, cinema. Goh now has to go back to his old friend and associate from...

Yôji Yamada’s fantasy drama selected as Japan’s nominee for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Japan has selected Yôji Yamada’s Nagasaki: Memories Of My Son as its Best Foreign Language Film submission for this year’s Academy Awards.

The film, produced by the Asahi Broadcasting Corporation and distributed worldwide by Shochiku International, is set in 1948, in post-World War II Japan.

The drama charts the story of midwife Nobuko (Sayuri Yoshinaga) who is resolved to move on as she stands at the grave of her son Koji (Kazunari Ninomiya) who died when the Americans bombed Nagasaki. However, upon returning home, she is visited by an apparition of her son, who continues to return in order to reminisce with his mother about the past, family, affection and war.

Nagasaki, also known as Living With My Mother, which is a literal translation of its Japanese title, Haha To Kuraseba, was released...

Yôji Yamada is a director known for retreading and reusing elements, both visual and in terms of plot, being the director of many series of movies that have been done across decades. While he really hasn't made a new series since the end of his Samurai Trilogy in 2006, he has recently favored the family chamber drama above any other, and in particular, he has decided to make countless references to the cinema of Yasujiro Ozu, being his most blatant a remake of the classic Tokyo Story, made in 2013 as Tokyo Family, which could be described as an homage as well as a demonstration of how little has changed in 60 years of Japanese family life. In his latest film, Yamada goes right into...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

★★★☆☆A faded postcard from a bygone era, Japanese director Yôji Yamada's The Little House (2014) drifted through this year's Berlinale Competition like cherry blossom on the breeze, surprisingly scooping the Best Actress Bear for lead Haru Kuroki. It's not that Kuroki's performance is poor, per se; it's just that so little about Yamada's latest is even vaguely memorable that nuanced performances such as these are swept up in the film's lapping waves of sentimentality and nostalgia. Old-fashioned to the extreme, so much of The Little House is gentle homage that there's barely enough to condone its festival presence.

If you're a fan of chanbara dramas--those sensitive, occasionally weepy samurai films that pop up every year or so--then you've probably already seen director Hideyuki Hirayama' Sword of Desperation. Well, if not the actual film, then some configuration of it in this subgenre populated with reluctant, but expert swordsmen, unrequited love, and feudal intrigues that threaten to destroy the salt-of-the-Earth poor and the noble middle class. I won't knock Sword of Desperation for over-familiarity--it's a genre that done well, I love and when done expertly, I'll allow to break my heart a little bit. I think Yôji Yamada's Twilight Samurai is the peak of the form. And now that I'm starting to talk about other films, I realize that I should really say something about...

Miike Takashi's chanbara flick 13 Assassins will probably strike a lot of people as much more impressive than it really is, if they've never seen a Kurosawa movie, read Lone Wolf & Cub or even missed out on Yôji Yamada's recent output (Twilight Samurai, Hidden Blade, Love & Honor). It's a good film, but there's not much of Miike in there, and what's left pales next to the things that influenced it. The film opens in the dying days of samurai-era Japan, when a loyal retainer commits hara-kiri in protest at the latest in a string of atrocities carried out by the heir to the shogunate. Lacking any battles to excel in, Lord Naritsugu (Gorô Inagaki, from idol group Smap) sees his position as...

House of Five Leaves was snapped up for Us distribution and online streaming by Funimation before it even began airing in Japan, as part of their deal to acquire selected titles in Fuji TV's Noitamina programming. The latest production by Manglobe, the studio behind the smash hit genre mashup Samurai Champloo and the dystopian sci-fi parable Ergo Proxy, House of Five Leaves is the animated adaptation of the manga of the same name. Yet despite the studio's pedigree, this is no easy sell, and even with a fairly conventional premise and setting in some ways it's actually a riskier proposition than either of their recent successes.

The story basically stems from the interaction between two central characters. First is Akitsu, a hapless ronin down on his luck - shy, self-conscious and withdrawn to the point of being phobic, he struggles to find (let alone keep) employment as a bodyguard...

Although it was made recently, Yôji Yamada's Bushi no ichibun has a very old feel to it. Even though the film's characters seldom contain their true feelings and thoughts, this doesn't mean that the film can't make its point.

This adaptation of Shûhei Fujisawa is set in feudal Japan. Shinnojo Mimura (Takuya Kimura), a lower-rank samurai, is one of a feudal lord's "poison tasters". This means that before the lord eats his meal, Shinnojo and other men taste it. Since Shinnojo finds his job dull, he tells his wife Kayo (Rei Dan) that he wants to open a kendo (fencing) school accessible to any child notwithstanding the caste they belong to. Unfortunately, Shinnojo is struck by an illness after he had tasted for the lord a sashimi made from shell fish. In fact, because this shell fish is out of season (the cooks didn't know it) it can harm anybody who consumes it.

We're all for getting out in the summertime, but there might not be anything more refreshing than cooling off in a movie theater... or seeing a movie in the comfort of your air-conditioned home on demand, on DVD, or online... or better yet catching a classic on the big screen at a nearby repertory theater. With literally hundreds of films to choose from this summer, we humbly present this guide to the season's most exciting offerings.

May 1

"Eldorado"

The Cast: Bouli Lanners, Fabrice Adde, Philippe Nahon, Didier Toupy, Franise Chichy

Director: Bouli Lanners

Fest Cred: Cannes, Warsaw, Glasgow, Palm Springs,

The Gist: When Elie (Adde), a hapless young thief attempts to rob Yvan (Lanners), a 40-year-old car dealer, the two form a unlikely friendship that leads to a road trip across Belgium in this slight comedy that won the Best European Film at the Director's Fortnight at Cannes last year.

By Neil Pedley

This week's offerings find twilight twenty-somethings longing for love in Los Angeles, "The Mummy" franchise heading East and a gruesome subway slasher trying very hard not to scare people clean out of the theater, at least not before the movie actually starts.

"America the Beautiful"

At 12, Gerren Taylor was a bright young model who strolled the catwalk of Fashion Week in Los Angeles. By 13, she was considered a has-been. Director Darryl Roberts traces Taylor's early entrance and exit from the runway to paint a far larger picture of the inner workings of the fashion industry, examining the class system of models and the advertisers and designers who relentlessly manufacture a feeling of negative self-image among consumers and then prey upon it to get us to dip into our wallets. Through interviews with fashion industry experts, the first-time documentarian learns that beauty isn't skin deep . it's retouched, glossed over and as a business,...

HONG KONG -- Gu Chang-Wei's Berlin Silver Bear winner The Peacock has been chosen as the opening film for this year's Hong Kong International Film Festival, which will run March 22-April 6 as part of the eight-event Hong Kong Entertainment Expo, organizers said Thursday. Yamada Yoji's samurai saga The Hidden Blade will be the other film to screen opening night, which will also feature a special gala premiere of JCE Movies' homage to kung fu, House of Fury, by Stephen Fung. A cut in government funding and a last-minute pullout by main sponsor Cathay Pacific has meant a slight downsizing of the program, with the number of films dropping from last year's 260 to 240, with 338 screenings. "But we're very happy with the selection we have now," festival director Peter Tsi said Thursday. "I think it's the best program we've had for some time."...

BERLIN -- Yoji Yamada's The Hidden Blade continues the themes, settings and depiction of samurai heroism he so brilliantly developed in his last film, The Twilight Samurai (2002). A graceful pace allows Yamada to explore fully the life of a lower-caste samurai in a rural fiefdom, where money is always in short supply and clan pressures lurk just outside his compound. Yamada again turns to the short stories of Shuhei Fujisawa to draw an indelible portrait of a solitary samurai with an unyielding code of honor and dignity that never will allow him to stray even for a moment into disgrace.

As with Twilight Samurai, which earned international appreciation and an Oscar nomination for best foreign-language film, The Hidden Blade will do well in urban specialty venues in many markets.

Structurally, the two films are remarkably similar. (Yamada wrote this screenplay with Yoshitaka Asama.) In the first act, a samurai (Masatoshi Nagase) must rescue a woman (Takako Matsu) being abused in her married life. The second act witnesses an unspoken love bloom between these two even as the samurai's loyalty is called into question by corrupt superiors.

The third act contains a dual to the death between the samurai, who never has killed, and a man the clan has ordered him to kill. This time, the opponent is a friend and brother samurai (Yukiyoshi Ozawa), whose life he does not wish to take.

This new story takes place at the moment in the mid-19th century when European weaponry and military strategies are imported into Japan's conservative, feudal society. Much of this is played for comedy as soldiers awkwardly struggle to understand rifles, cannons and alien military training so at odds with the old-school methods of sword and knife. Yet you sense a kind of moral corruption has entered Japanese society, too, ushered in by these new and impersonal weapons.

The hero in both stories is virtually the same man, who very much represents the old school. His unswerving righteous might be boring were it not so fascinating to watch the samurai maneuver in a difficult society where divided loyalties and easy corruption litter his daily path. Similarly, the beauty and purity of the heroine might come off as bland were it not so touching to watch the mistreated woman blossom in the samurai's warm and caring household.

Yamada has performed a minor miracle with these two samurai films: He has managed a portrait of goodness and virtue that is neither cynical nor contrived. The director clearly believes in the samurai spirit and code. By reviving it on the screen with such empathy, Yamada demonstrates the true complexity of a simple life lived well.

This is a marvelously produced film from its quiet appreciation for the countryside to the minute details in its interior design. A mostly Western-style music score by Isao Tomita skillfully intertwines the classic with the intimate.

THE HIDDEN BLADE

Shochiku Co.

Credits:

Director: Yoji Yamada

Screenwriters: Yoji Yamada, Yoshitaka Asama

Based on stories by: Shuhei Fujisawa

Producer: Junichi Sakomoto, Takeo Hisamatsu, Hiroshi Fukasawa, Ichiro Yamamoto

Director of photography: Mutsuo Naganuma

Music: Isao Tomita

Costumes: Kazuko Kurosawa

Editor: Iwao Ishii

Cast:

Munezo Katagiri: Masatoshi Nagase

Kie: Takako Matsu

Samon Shimada: Hidetaka Yoshioka

Yaichiro Hazama: Yukiyoshi Ozawa, Shino: Tomoko Tabata

No MPAA rating

Running time -- 132 minutes...

MUNICH -- Paul Weitz's In Good Company and Mike Mills' feature debut, Thumbsucker, are among the 21 films in competition at the Berlin International Film Festival, organizers said Thursday. The lineup also boasts 16 world premieres, five international debuts and several works by debutante film directors. Competition titles in the festival main section include the world premiere of Raoul Peck's ... Sometimes in April, starring Debra Winger; and Kakushi Ken-Oni no Tsume (The Hidden Blade), from Japanese director Yoji Yamada; Chinese director Tsai Ming-Liang's Tian bian yi duo yun (The Wayward Cloud), which mixes musical scenes with explicit sex; and Aleksandr Sokurov's Sonltse (The Sun), the third part of his trilogy on power.

COLOGNE, Germany -- Japanese entertainment giant Shochiku said on Monday it will receive the Berlinale Camera achievement award at this year's Berlin International Film Festival, becoming the first ever company honored. Shochiku's managing director of production and theatrical distribution Takeo Hisamatsu will accept the Berlinale Camera statuette. Shochiku, which is celebrating its 110th anniversary this year, has been one of the most influential forces in Asian cinema, introducing famed Japanese directors such as Yasujiro Ozu, Hiroshi Shimizu, Kenji Mizoguchi, Nagisa Oshima, Keisuke Kinoshita and Yoji Yamada to an international audience.

The Academy's annual foreign-language film nominees symposium found all five nominated directors in expansive moods Saturday morning at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater. Clearly the filmmakers relished the chance to share their movies with a mostly American audience and enjoyed responding to questions about their films from moderator Mark Johnson, who chairs the foreign-language film award executive committee. Veteran Japanese director Yoji Yamada even noted that while Sunday's awards ceremony is the key date in the Oscar calendar, for him the symposium -- held before a turn-away crowd-- was "a great souvenir for me to take back to Japan." So comfortable were the nominees that the usual question about working in Hollywood found some even willing to take a crack at the daunting task. French-Canadian director Denys Arcand, a three-time foreign-language film nominee, observed that his friend, British director Stephen Frears, has made two "fantastic" Hollywood films: Dangerous Liaisons and The Grifters.