The New York Asian Film Festival is set to launch for its 22nd edition on July 14th. 
It runs until July 30th and will feature 60+ new and classic films from China, Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan, Philippines, Thailand, South Korea, Singapore, Vietnam, the UK, and the Asian-American community.
There are a lot of great titles on display with a strong Japanese selection. Opening Film Killing Romance, from director Lee Won-suk, looks especially intriguing because it has provoked polarising responses.
Getting back to the Japanese films(!), there are a number of guests who will be attending the fest to introduce the film’s they worked on. Here are the names:
Junji Sakamoto – Okiku and the World – He is the recipient of NYAFF’s 2023 Screen International Star Asia Lifetime Achievement Award
Daishi Matsunaga and Ryohei Suzuki – Egoist,
Satoru Iguchi (King Gnu) – In Her Room,
Anshul Chauhan and Shogen – December,
Takumi Saitoh – Home Sweet Home,
Takeshi Fukunaga – Mountain Woman.
At the time of writing there are 9 features and 2 shorts from Japan. The number of films can increase, so I’ll update this post to reflect the changes. Details are given below with dates/times/appearances coming under information/IMDB links.
Here’s the line-up!
FEATURES
#Manhole 
#マンホール「#Manho-ru」
Release Date: February 10th, 2023
Duration: 99 mins.
Director: Kazuyishi Kumakiri
Writer: Michitaka Okada (Screenplay),
Starring: Yuto Nakajima, Nao, Kento Nagayama,
Kazuyishi Kumakiri (My Man, Hole in the Sky) works with pop star Yuto Nakajima and rising actress Nao (The Sound of Grass, My Broken Mariko) to deliver this odd-looking story of a man trapped down a manhole.
Synopsis: Shunsuke Kawamura is surely on the path to success. He is the top agent at the real estate company he works at and he’s about to marry his boss’ daughter. When we meet him, people are throwing him a party in Shibuya on the night before the wedding. Drunk when he leaves the occasion, he walks home and ends up falling down a manhole. When he wakes up, he realises a few things: it is still night time, he’s hurt, he’s trapped and his wedding is imminent. Trying to raise people on his phone proves hard, especially as the GPS isn’t working, so Kawamura starts a “manhole woman” account on social media and asks netizens to locate him and rescue him.
赦し 「Yurushi」
Release Date: March 18th, 2023
Duration: 99 mins.
Director: Anshul Chauhan
Writer: Rand Colter, Mina Moteki, Anshul Chauhan (Screenplay),
Starring: Shogen, Megumi, Ryo Matsuura, Shingo Fujimori, Toru Kizu, Takuzo Shimizu, Miki Maya
Anshul Chauhan has made impressive progress since his debut, Bad Poetry Tokyo (2017), and follow-up, Kontora (2020), both award winners. I have interviewed him twice, once for Bad Poetry Tokyo and the second time for Kontora. December is a solid courtroom drama with an impressive story of people grasping at the finer human principles of forgiveness in trying circumstances.
I reviewed it (link here!)
Synopsis: A couple whose marriage broke up due to death of their high school-aged daughter are brought back together again to fight against the reduction in the prison sentence of her killer. After separating, the father and the mother have taken radically different paths in life but their tragedy unites them one more time as they as they confront the murderer and hear her out, thus setting in motion a path of redemption for the people involved.
Egoist 
エゴイスト「Egoisuto」
Release Date: February 10th, 2023
Duration: 120 mins.
Director: Daishi Matsunaga
Writer: Daishi Matsunaga, Kyoko Inukai (Screenplay), Makoto Takayama (Autobiographical Novel),
Starring: Ryohei Suzuki, Hio Miyazawa, Yuuko Nakamura, Iori Wada, Akira Emoto, Durian Lollobrigida, Sawako Agawa,
Synopsis: When Kosuke was 14 years old, his mother died and he spent his adolescence in a country town where he suppressed his gay identity. As an adult, he lives a freewheeling lifestyle of a fashion magazine editor and takes up a relationship with Ryuta, a personal trainer. Ryuta’s mother joins them to spend quality time together and Kosuke is reminded of his own feelings for his late mother. One day, Ryuta disappears…
Home Sweet Home 
スイート・マイホーム 「Sui-to Mai Ho-mu」
Release Date: September 01st, 2023
Duration: 113 mins.
Director: Takumi Saito
Writer: Yutaka Kuramochi (Screenplay), Rinko Kamizu (Original Novel)
Starring: Masataka Kubota, Misako Renbutsu, Nao, Yosuke Kubozuka, Ayumu Nakajima, Toshie Negishi, Ririka,
Synopsis: In Nagano, it gets REAL cold. This is one of the reasons why Kenji Kiyosawa, a sports instructor with a wife and daughter who are sensitive to the cold, builds a house with an air conditioner/heating system that can heat the entire building up. Kenji and his wife have a second daughter as the home is completed and it looks like they might start a dream life but mysterious events happen…
A Hundred Flowers 
百花 「Hyakka」
Release Date: September 09th, 2022
Duration: 104 mins.
Director: Genki Kawamura
Writer: Genki Kawamura (Script/Original Novel),
Starring: Masaki Suda, Mieko Harada, Masami Nagasawa, Masatoshi Nagase,
Genki Kawamura is a prolific producer (think Densha Otoko, Parasyte and The Wolf Children) and he’s also a novelist/scriptwriter (If Cats Disappeared From the World) but his directing credits are few and far between. This is one of his efforts and it has a great cast led by Masaki Suda (Love at Least, The Light Shines Only There) and Mieko Harada (Ran, Dreams) as a mother-son duo.
Synopsis: Izumi Kasai (Masaki Suda) is a young man with a job in the record industry and beautiful wife (Masami Nagasawa) who is about to deliver their child. His happiness is tinged with sadness because his mother Yuriko (Mieko Harada), a woman who runs a piano school, is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and is losing her memory fast. Izumi takes responsibility for his mother, the woman who raised him alone and abandoned him during an incident that Izumi can never forget. Despite feeling a gap between himself and his mother, Izumi is devoted to her care and when he discovers a notebook in Yuriko’s room, the truth about the incident and the secret life that Yuriko lived without him is revealed.
In Her Room 
ひとりぼっちじゃない 「Hitori Bocchi Janai」
Release Date: March 10th, 2023
Duration: 135 mins.
Director: Chihiro Ito
Writer: Chihiro Ito (Screenplay/Original Novel),
Starring: Fumika Baba, Satoru Iguchi, Yuumi Kawai, Hirobumi Watanabe, Kazuyuki Aijima,
This is veteran screenwriter Chihiro (Crying Out Love, in the Center of the World) Ito’s debut film. It premiered at the Tokyo International Film Festival last year. I’ve leapfrogged it and already watched her sophomore feature which plays at the Osaka Asian Film Festival.
Synopsis: Miyako is a mysterious woman who runs an aroma store and lives in a room more akin to a forest glen than a Marie Kondo minimalist abode. Susume is a dentist who is in love with her. He visits Miyako, always trying to get closer to the woman who seems to know something about him that even he doesn’t know,. Then Miyako’s friend Yoko gets involved…
Mayhem Girls 
メイヘムガールズ 「Meihemu Ga-ruzu」
Release Date: November 26th, 2022
Duration: 98 mins.
Director: Shinichi Fujita
Writer: Shinichi Fujita, Erika Nakayama (Script),
Starring: Mizuki Yoshida, Manami Igashira, Amane Kamiya, Hina Kikuchi, Taisei Kido,
Synopsis: The COVID pandemic means that social distancing and wearing masks are in for good and this doesn’t sit well with Mizuho and her high school girl friends, all of whom are frustrated that festivals and so forth are being cancelled. Each of these girls finds their supernatural powers awakened: Tamaki has telepathic powers, Akane can teleport, and Kei can fly. When Mizuho’s former tutor, Yusuke, discovers their psychic abilities, a battle begins…
Motherhood 
母性 「Bosei」
Release Date: November 23rd, 2022
Duration: 115 mins.
Director: Ryuichi Hiroki
Writer: Asami Shiroma (Script), Kanae Minato (Original Novel),
Starring: Erika Toda, Mei Nagano, Mao Daichi, Atsuko Takahata, Junko Takahata, Masaki Miura, Yuri Nakamura, Rio Yamashita,
Ryuichi Hiroki (Your Friends) works on a movie adaptation of a Kanae Minato novel. She’s famous for Confessions, Penance, and The Snow White Murder Case. The cast is led by Erika Toda (SPEC) and Mei Nagano (Parks) who play a mother and daughter caught up in a difficult relationship and a nasty mystery that looks like it plays on unreliable narrators and different perspectives – something Minato loves utilising – as it calls into question whether something like love between family members is natural or always present.
Synopsis: High school girl Sayaka (Mei Nagano) and her mother Rumiko (Erika Toda) look like a stable family from the outside but when Sayaka dies and the reason is unclear – was it suicide or an accident??? – the truth begins to be revealed. Such revelations come about since the story is told from both the perspective of Rumiko and Sayaka and so Motherhood recounts the same events differently so that we get a sad tale of a family where love is absent…
Okiku and the World 
せかいのおきく 「Sekai no Okiku」
Release Date: April 28th, 2023
Duration: 89 mins.
Director: Junji Sakamoto
Writer: Junji Sakamoto (Screenplay),
Starring: Haru Kuroki, Kanichiro, Sosuke Ikematsu, Koichi Sato, Renji Ishibashi, Claude Maki,
I first wrote about this for the Rotterdam International Film Festival 2023 preview.
Junji Sakamoto is one of those directors who has racked up awards and great titles (Face) but doesn’t have the international presence of someone like Shunji Iwai has. This might tip him over the edge.
The film features great performers like Haru Kuroki (The Bride of Rip Van Winkle), Renji Ishibashi (The Bird People of China), Sosuke Ikematsu (The Tokyo Night Sky is Always the Densest Shade of Blue) and Koichi Sato (Starfish Hotel). Sato’s son, Kanichiro, has a leading role, too.
Synopsis: In this coming-of-age period drama, we are taken to Edo-era Japan and we watch two manure collector, whose work is to turn the waste from the tenement toilets into fertiliser to sell to local farmers, and a a paper shavings collector, both of whom meet Okiku, the only daughter of a fallen samurai. A story of romance and resilience unfolds, all told with black-and-white photography embellished with glimpses of colour, revealing both the beautiful and the foul.
Mountain Woman 
山女 「Yama Onna」
Release Date: June 30th, 2023
Duration: 100 mins.
Director: Takeshi Fukunaga
Writer: Takeshi Fukunaga, Ikue Osada (Screenplay)
Starring: Anna Yamada, Ayame, Denden, Masatoshi Nagase, Toko Miura, Mirai Moriyama, Haya Nakazaki, Ryutaro Ninomiya, Yota Kawase,
Takeshi Fukunaga made waves with his Hokkaido-set drama Ainu Mosir (currently on Netflix) that draws on the conflict between contemporary Japan and the traditions of the Ainu people. He’s back with Mountain Woman, a film which ditches the contemporary part and looks at old Japan in a story that looks at poverty and discrimination. It is another well-received work and stars a who’s who of contemporary actors and actresses.
Synopsis: We are taken to Tohoku, circa the 18th century, to a village short on food due to extreme cold weather. Rin (Anna Yamada) is despised by her fellow villagers but finds peace at Hayachimine mountain. A shrine to the goddess of thieves is set up there. When Rin’s father (Masatoshi Nagase) causes an incident and she defends him, she leaves home and goes deep into the mountain where she meets a mysterious mountain dweller (Mirai Moriyama)…
SHORTS
HIDARI (Pilot Version) 
HIDARI（パイロット版） 「HIDARI (Pairotto Ban)」
Release Date: April 21st, 2023
Duration: 5 mins.
Director: Masashi Kawamura
Writer: Masashi Kawamura (Screenplay/Original Story)
Starring: N/A
Last month I was surprised when I started getting an insane amount of traffic on an article I wrote over a year ago about a stop-motion film named HIDARI. It turned out that the makers had taken to Kickstarter to help fund production and many writers must have been using my post as background to write about the campaign.
Anyway, a 5-minute pilot version of this stop-motion animation has been screened at a festival and will be shown in a cinema along with two other stop-motion films from the studios involved (Dwarf and Tecarat), Komaneko and Gon, the Little Fox.
Synopsis: Jingoro, a talented carpenter involved in the reconstruction of Edo Castle, finds himself a marked man when he discovers a secret hidden in the structure. His master, family and friends are killed, and he himself loses his right arm. However, with his prodigious carpentry skills, he makes a powerful karakuri prosthetic arm and sets out on a journey of revenge with his surviving partner, a cat.
Neo Portraits 
心って、どこにあるんだろう。 「Kokorotte, Doko ni Arundarou」
Release Date: N/A
Duration: 20 mins.
Director: GAZEBO
Writer: GAZEBO (Screenplay)
Starring: Konosuke Harada, Yo Osamu, Kimiko Ogino, Takumi Kasezawa, Takao Kanno, Ikumi Tsuchiya,
Synopsis: In a depopulated town in rural Japan, a high schooler named Takumi questions why the adults around him treat the android made in his mother’s image as the real thing. The only adult not to do this is Hana, his homeroom teacher.
New York Asian Film Festival will take place at Film at Lincoln Center (FLC) at the Walter Reade Theater (165 West 65th Street) from July 14-30. There is also a special weekend of screenings (July 21–23) at a new venue, the Barrymore Film Center in Fort Lee, New Jersey.
Tickets are already on sale.
See more details about pricing and places at the bottom of this page.
Past coverage of the festival:
New York Asian Film Festival 2022
New York Asian Film Festival 2021
New York Asian Film Festival 2020
New York Asian Film Festival 2019
New York Asian Film Festival 2018