News

There have been so many engrossing dark TV series that took viewers on mind-bending journeys and truly played with their heads. While modern television has embraced much darker and more sinister stories in recent decades, it takes a truly great show to bury underneath the surface of a series narrative and deliver philosophically rich stories that strike a chord for their deep, probing themes that leave a mark on viewers consciousness well after the credits have rolled. A thought-provoking series that can play with viewers' expectations often marks the difference between a simply good show and a truly great one.

Many of the best TV shows of all time were dark in nature and did not underestimate viewers' intelligence with deeply complex and intricate narratives. Highly influential series like Twin Peaks laid the groundwork for television to embrace more challenging and experimental stories. At the same time, creators worldwide, such...

Some of the most effective and engaging TV shows in recent years were also so gore-filled that audiences often had to look away in pure terror and disgust. From thrilling sci-fi dystopias to intense psychological horrors, just because a series was packed with gore, murder, and violence did not stop it from being truly great. In many cases, the excessively gruesome nature of these shows added to their appeal as they pushed the limits of what could be depicted and accepted in mainstream television.

Plenty of the most gruesomely violent TV shows were filled with gory sequences and sinister characters who committed heinous acts. From intense games that saw characters' lives on the line to sinister antiheroes who killed for the sheer thrill of it, in recent years, television has caught up with horror movies to make series that were equal to or even exceeded the most gore-filled cinematic spectacles.

The world premiere of Takeshi Kushida’s Acting For Beginners has been set as the opening film of Japan’s Skip City International D-Cinema Festival (July 13-21), which has also revealed its international and Japanese competition titles.

It marks a return to the festival for Japanese filmmaker Kushida, whose psychological thriller My Mother’s Eyes premiered in competition at Skip City last year, having won the festival’s top award in 2020 with Woman Of The Photographs.

Kushida’s latest centres on a man who moves between dreams and reality against the backdrop of an abandoned factory where time seems to have stopped.

Skip City International D-Cinema Festival which started in 2004 in Kawaguchi City, Saitama Prefecture, has been held every year as a “gateway for emerging talent” centered on the International Competition and the Japanese Film Competition (features and shorts). The festival launched the careers of Kazuya Shiraishi (Lesson in Murder), Ryota Nakano (The Asadas), Shinichiro Ueda (One Cut of the Dead), Shinzo Katayama (Missing) and many other directors who are leading the Japanese film industry as top runners and whose new movies audiences are looking forward to seeing.

The 21st edition will be held both at theaters and online as a hybrid festival again.

On Friday, June 7th, we held a press conference to announce the full line-up consisting of the titles of the whole line-up. This year's festival will open with Acting for Beginners, directed by Takeshi Kushida, who won the 2020 Skip City Award for Woman of the Photographs, the nomination...

It’s official: Netflix has renewed its hit Japanese sci-fi thriller drama Alice in Borderland for a third season. Fans of the show noticed late Wednesday that Netflix had unceremoniously dropped a teaser for a third season, leading to online speculation that more episodes of the live-action show were officially in the works. At the Apos entertainment and media industry conference in Bali, Indonesia, Netflix’s vice president of content in Asia Pacific, Minyoung Kim, made the news official by announcing the renewal during a keynote talk from the stage.

Following its second season debut in December 2022, Alice in Borderland became Netflix Japan’s most-watched title ever, even including anime titles. It shot up to the Top 10 in over 90 countries, claiming the No. 1 spot in 17 of them, and clocked 200 million viewing hours worldwide.

With Kento Yamazaki and Tao Tsuchiya reprising their roles as Arisu and Usagi in Season 3, Netflix says...

We are living with a generation that is increasingly obsessed with multiverses and the fluid concept of time, so it was only genius for Kazuaki Kiriya to hop on the bandwagon and deliver his rumored ‘final piece of work', set in Japan of the near future. Working with concepts along the veins of his previous apocalyptic “Casshern (2004)”, the director known for his outlandish ideas, takes us on a time-bending journey of samurais, nuclear attacks, and magical grimoires.

From the End of the World is screening at Japan Cuts

As the great expanse of earth gives way to a bleak forest fire, a child suddenly appears and finds herself in the fray of death and destruction in Edo Japan. Everything is a picture of charcoal-blackness but the blood that flows around her is a sea of striking red (expertly manipulated by cinematographer Chigi Kanbe). Color then returns as the picture transitions to the modern world.

A distribution hub for Japanese independent films Sakka is set to distribute “Ken and Kazu” which originally premiered in 2015 at Tokyo International Film Festival where the film won Best Picture in Japanese Cinema Splash. Directed by Hiroshi Shoji, this refreshing and gripping Japanese noir was invited to Edinburgh International Film Festival, Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival, Japan Cuts, and many more.

This will be the film's first ever overseas release despite being enthusiastically embraced by film fans around the world when it premiered. It will come to Sakka in August, and will be available to stream worldwide excluding Japan.

“This is my first feature film.” The director Shoji sent a special message to the Sakka audience. “It was shot in 2013, released in 2016, and traveled to many film festivals overseas. I am extremely grateful that the film will be released on Sakka and can be seen by audience overseas again 10 years after we shot it.

Netflix will give a May launch to “Sanctuary,” a sports drama series set in the specialized world of Japanese sumo wrestling.

Produced by the Slowtide company for the streamer, the show follows a juvenile delinquent who becomes a sumo apprentice. He soon finds himself on a collision course with a voiceless wrestler carrying a secret.

Netflix pitches it as “a gritty look into the underbelly of professional sumo, a world full of young men with ambitions for money, women, fame, and power […] where some may find sanctuary with a history of more than 1,500 years in Japan’s traditional culture and as a religious ceremony.”

The show is directed by Eguchi Kan from a screenplay by Kanazawa Tomoki. The producer is Fujita Daisuke and the executive producer for Netflix Sakamoto Kaata. The show will upload from May 4.

The diverse cast includes Ichinose Wataru, Sometani Shota (“Themis”), Kutsuna Shioli (“Deadpool 2”), Taguchi Tomorowo,...

The trailer for Alice in Borderland season 2 introduces deadly new games. A live-action adaptation of Haro Aso's manga series, which shares the same name, Alice in Borderland, debuted in 2020. Consisting of eight episodes and directed by Shinsuke Sato, the story follows characters who find themselves in an eerily abandoned Tokyo and are forced to compete in kill-or-be-killed competitions. As the season progressed, the show's universe expanded to reveal more secrets and a strange conspiracy that could go beyond what any protagonist expected. Though it was renewed shortly after its premiere, the second installment of the adaptation has been a long time coming.

But now, after filming wrapped on Alice in Borderland season 2 back in March, Netflix has unveiled the trailer for the upcoming episodes. Set to debut on December 22, Alice in Borderland season 2 looks like it will double down on the wild aspects of the first installment. There's an...

The twisted competition at the center of "Alice in Borderland" is back, and it looks like the games aren't done just yet. A "super teaser trailer" for season 2 of the popular show, which is based on the manga series of the same name by Haro Aso, was revealed during Netflix's Tudum fan event, and it looks like we're in for another wild ride.

The teaser shows the return of protagonists Arisu (Kento Yamazaki) and Usagi (Tao Tsuchiya) after that massive cliffhanger at the end of the last season. After completing a number of increasingly deadly challenges, they learned to their dismay that there are even more coming as the games enter a second phase. We also get our first look at some of the other contestants roped into the games, as well as shots of the sadistic gamemaster Mira (Riisa Naka), who looks to be a more menacing presence this season.

In a style that reminded me much of Kitano’s “Kids Return,” in its disillusioned portrayal of the lives of Yakuza, Hiroshi Shoji presents a truly punk film that continues the currently lost legacy of the Japanese master.

Ken and Kazu are two lowlifes who use the failing car repair shop of the latter to deal meth, with the assistance of a simpleton named Teru, who also helps at the shop. Both of them have a good reason behind their actions, since Ken’s girlfriend is pregnant and he needs money to support her and the baby, and Kazu has to put his senile mother in an elderly house.

In this line of work, they actually work for Todo, a former classmate who is the yakuza in charge of the area, and whose enforcer is a brute named Tagami, who matches the archetype of the Yakuza henchman in all aspects.

Based on the novel “Waga Ikka Zenin Shikei” by Tomohiko Suzuki, which is based on the infamous Omuta murders, “Death Row Family” attempts a “reenact” of the actual events, taking many liberties regarding the story, in exploitation style.

Death Row Family is screening at the 19th Japan Film Fest Hamburg

Takanori, the son of a yakuza boss, is offered as a scapegoat to another syndicate and sent to jail for a crime he didn’t commit. Two years later, he is released from prison. After reuniting with his girlfriend, Kaori, Takanori meets with his older brother Satoshi. He tells Takanori of his plan to rob the safe of the Yoshidas, a local family running a loan shark operation, whose members happen to be close friends with the two brothers and associates of the family. Takanori is reluctant, but after his brother threatens his girlfriend, he decides to partake in the...