The 2024 edition of the Rotterdam International Film Festival will take place from January 24th to February 05th. Scoping out the programme via its search option reveals a solid list of Japanese films.
Below is a list of Japanese features and shorts that have been programmed:
Features
Tiger Competition
莉の対 「Rei no Tsui」
Release Date: 2024
Duration: 189 mins.
Director: Toshihiko Tanaka
Writer: Toshihiko Tanaka (Screenplay),
Starring: Takara Suzuki, Toshihiko Tanaka, Maeko Oyama, Shogo Moriyama, Akio Ikeda,
Toshihiko Tanaka originally worked in the banking sector but switched to acting and has been active mainly on the stage. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he studied filmmaking and produced this film made with a cast and crew of mostly non-professionals and students.
The title of the film is based on the Kanji character “Rei (莉).” It can be a genderless given name or it can represent a variety of meanings, especially when connected with others.
Synopsis: This drama focuses on a thirtysomething named Hikari Matsushita. Her Tokyo life consists of going to the office and going to plays. It is stable compared to those around her but she feels a lack of self-worth. Meaning comes into it through the pictures of a deaf landscape photographer named Masato. She begins a relationship with him and travels to his home in Hokkaido just as the lives of the people around her, and her own life, falls apart. However, it is through struggling alongside counterparts that meaning is found in life and Hikari finds a sense of self.
BRIGHT FUTURE
ブルーイマジン 「Buru- Imajin」
Release Date: March, 2024
Duration: 93 mins.
Director: Urara Matsubayashi
Writer: Minami Goto (Screenplay),
Starring: Mayu Yamaguchi, Asuka Kawatoko, Yui Kitamura, Yuzumi Shintani, Iana Bernardez, Hirobumi Watanabe,
Urara Matsubayashi has risen from being an actress (The Hungry Lion) to producer (Kamata Prelude, Saga Saga) to this film where she is a director. It tackles sexual assault and predatory directors in the Japanese film industry and also shows why solidarity with victims, and showing kindness and understanding, is important. It is a #MeToo movement film made by young women in the industry.
Synopsis: Noel is an aspiring actress who has maintained her silence as a rape victim. When she finds a safe house for women called “Blue Imagine”, she begins a slow process of healing as she interacts with other inhabitants who have been through similar experiences of abuse. The camaraderie she finds allows her to come to the aid of another actress who was targeted by the same director and the two publicly speak out. The two encounter prejudice and backlash but are able to confront their past and try to confront a culture hostile to women.
LIMELIGHT SECTION
Release Date: February 17th, 2023
Duration: 120 mins
Director: Yuzuru Tachikawa
Writer: NUMBER 8 (Screenplay), Shinichi Ishizuka (Original Creator)
Starring: Yuki Yamada (Dai Miyamoto), Amane Okayama (Shunji Tamada), Shotaro Mamiya (Yukinori Sawabe),
Animation Production: NUT
Synopsis: Dai Miyamoto is a junior high school student in Sendai whose dreams switch from basketball to jazz after a friend takes him to a live music performance and he is touched by the experience. He chooses the saxophone to play and practices it by himself. No guidance, no ability to read sheet music, just the passion to become the best saxophonist in the world. His dream takes him to Tokyo where he moves in with a former classmate and forms a band. Dai hits the clubs with the band and begins to learn about the Japanese jazz scene.
悪は存在しない 「Aku wa Sonzai Shinai」
Release Date: April 26th, 2024
Duration: 106 mins.
Director: Ryusuke Hamaguchi
Writer: Ryusuke Hamaguchi (Screenplay),
Starring: Hitoshi Omika, Ryo Nishikawa, Ryuji Kosaka, Ayaka Shibutani,
Ryusuke Hamaguchi has two films out this year, this one and Gift. Both have their roots in a collaboration with musician Eiko Ishibashi (composer on Drive My Car). Gift features a live music score that is performed by Ishibashi. Evil Does Not Exist is more of a straight narrative, it appears. It features work by cinematographer Yoshio Kitagawa – Happy Hour, The Sound of Waves, Intimacies, and the Joy of Man’s Desiring.
Image credit: Courtesy of TIFF
Synopsis: Takumi and his daughter Hana live quiet lives in a village near Tokyo. The bucolic peace of the place is disrupted when land developers arrive with the announcement that they intend to build a big tourist attraction in the form of a glamping site for tourists to go camping. It will be built near Takumi’s house. The locals, sensing life beginning to change, offer resistance to the project while the land developers from the big city are determined to move forward and change the natural environment. Conflict ensues…
Harbour Section
春に散る 「Haru ni Chiru」
Release Date: August 25th, 2023
Duration: 98 mins.
Director: Takahisa Zeze
Writer: Takahisa Zeze, Wataru Hoshi (Screenplay), Kotaro Sawaki (Original Work)
Starring: Koichi Sato, Ryusei Yokohama, Kanna Hashimoto, Sho Aikawa, Masataka Kubota, Tomoko Yamaguchi, Shogen, Maki Sakai, Eita Okuna, Shinichiro Matsuura,
A boxing drama with a great cast that includes Koichi Sato (Starfish Hotel, Okiku and the World), Sho Aikawa (Eyes of the Spider, The Serpent’s Path), Shogen (December), Masataka Kubota (Home Sweet Home).
Synopsis: Jinichi Hirooka was a rising star in the boxing world until an unfair decision in a bout crushed his career. He moved to the US and never returned to Japan until 40 years elapsed. His return puts him in the orbit of Shogo, another boxer who has had a loss due to an unfair decision. Shogo takes out his anger on Jinichi after they encounter each other in a bar. Jinichi knocks the younger man down easily and Shogo senses that he might have a shot at greatness if he trains underneath the ageing bruiser. Jinichi puts the young man through intense training, seeing a real talent who could take on the world champion.
ほかげ 「Hokage」
Release Date: November 25th, 2023
Duration: 95 mins.
Director: Shinya Tsukamoto
Writer: Shinya Tsukamoto (Screenplay),
Starring: Shuri, Ouga Tsukao, Hiroki Kono, Go Riju, Tatsushi Omori, Mirai Moriyama,
Shinya Tsukamoto (Tokyo Fist, Vital) gives audiences a tale of broken people in the black markets of post-war Japan. It stars Shuri (Love at Least), Mirai Moriyama (The Drudgery Train), and Hiroki Kono, director of the Pia Film Festival Grand Prix award-winning film J005311. This is apparently part of Tsukamoto’s war trilogy, which includes Fires On the Plain and Killing.
Synopsis: As Japan rebuilds itself from the ruins of war, one person, a woman living alone in a half-burnt ramen restaurant, looks after a boy who lost his family in an air raid. The two survive by her selling her body and the occasional stealing of food from the black market. When a former soldier comes seeking her services, he gets close to both the woman and the little boy but violence soon erupts between the adults who cannot escape their traumas and the boy finds himself on the road with a man who is haunted by nightmares of his past. The man’s reason for travelling with the boy are soon revealed to be connected to taking revenge on the person who left him with those nightmares.
Born in Gunsan and After Seven Years, I Was Repatriated to Japan
私は群山に生まれて7年、それから引き揚げて… 「Watashi wa Gunsan ni Umarete 7-nen, Sore kara Hikiagete」
Release Date: 2023
Duration: 239 mins.
Director: Zonpilone
Writer: N/A
Starring: Akio Kambayashi
Zonpilone has a Master’s degree and a PhD in Film Studies from the Kyoto University of Arts and is based in Japan but has worked as a film director and art director for the Experimental Film & Video Festival Seoul. His films have the power to leave you speechless and overwhelmed due to their energy and textual depth. The works of his that I have seen all centre on Yasujiro Ozu and were screened by Osaka Asian Film Festival in their Housen Cultural Foundation sections – Ozu, Setsuko, Sadao. His latest is an essay film that looks fascinating.
Synopsis: Fukei-ron – filming a landscape to reveal the economics and poetics and politics and memories that shape the people who inhabit places. Here we get the life and memories of Akio Kambayashi who was born in 1938 in Gunsan, Korea, during the Japanese occupation and repatriated to Japan after the war and is a Zainichi Korean in Japan. Through him, we get a look at issues such as Japan’s colonialism and an insight into life as a minority in Japan.
花腐し 「Hanakutashi」
Release Date: November 10th, 2023
Duration: 137 mins.
Director: Haruhiko Arai
Writer: Haruhiko Arai (Screenplay),
Starring: Go Ayano, Tasuku Emoto, Honami Sato, Mitsuo Yoshioka, Yota Kawase,
Haruhiko Arai directed the steamy erotic drama It Feels So Good (2019) and he reunites with Tasuku Emoto, the lead of that film, to explore the pink film industry. The lead is the so-so Go Ayano (Beneath the Shadow).
Synopsis: A pink film director named Kutani has struggled to make a film in recent years and he is struggling to make the rent. As rainy season approaches, his landlord gives him notice of eviction. It is at this time that he meets an aspiring screenwriter named Iseki and the two talk. As they talk, they both realise that they both loved the same woman, Shoko, whose dream was to be an actress. As the lives of each person intersect, each faces the end of their dreams.
火だるま槐多よ 「Hi Daruma Kaita Yo」
Release Date: December 23rd, 2023
Duration: 112 mins.
Director: Hisayasu Sato
Writer: Shiro Yumeno (Screenplay),
Starring: Yuya Shintaro, Riho Sato, Kei Kudo, Reno Suzuta, Ken Hatta,
Hisayasu Sato, one of the “Four Heavenly Kings of Pink Films” has reunited with Shiro Yumeno, who he worked with on The Eye’s Dream (2016) and the Rampo Noir story The Caterpillar, to make this film described as a “surreal, time-crossing, meta-layered essay on the artist [Keita Maruyama], his originality and his legacy.”
Synopsis: A performance group made up of people with special abilities, such as precognition, clairvoyance, and telekinesis, use their powers to channel the works of Keita Murayama, a Taisho-era painter, novelist, and poet, who died prematurely at the age of 22, and recreate them in performative dance while driving to a mysterious cave called Agartha.
Cinema Regained
白い巨塔 「Shiroi Kyootoo」
Release Date: October 15th, 1966
Duration: 150 mins.
Director: Satsuo Yamamoto
Writer: Shinobu Hashimoto (Screenplay), Toyoko Yamasaki (Original Novel)
Starring: Jiro Tamiya, Eijiro Tono, Takahiro Tamura, Eitaro Ozawa, Eiji Funakoshi, Shiho Fujimura,
Satsuo Yamamoto was a left-wing filmmaker who depicted the brutality of the Japanese military and capital and also depicted corruption in society. This is a highly-regarded movie that racked up a lot of awards (according to Wikipedia) from a socially conscious filmmaker:
- 40th Kinema Junpo Best Ten 1st place, Japanese Film Director Award, Screenplay Award
- 21st Mainichi Film Competition Japan Film Awards, Director Award, Screenplay Award
- 17th Blue Ribbon Awards Best Picture, Best Screenplay
- 21st Art Festival Award
- Silver Award at the 5th Moscow International Film Festival
Synopsis: At Naniwa University Hospital in Osaka, Goro Zaizen is a rising star eager to further is how career while his former classmate Shuji Satomi works on research and helping his patients. The two are assistant professors but only one will get a promotion and seeing how they work and the politics of where they work forms the basis of this drama as lectures, operations, and confrontations occur.
Shorts
Release Date: 2024
Duration: 24 mins.
Director: Yusuke Iwasaki
Writer: N/A
Starring: Maru Nouchi, Mizuki Oishi, Kaho Ito, Rika,
Yusuke Iwasaki attended Keio University’s Faculty of Literature before moving on to film. He has earned awards in advertising and now makes his fiction film debut with Void (2024).
Synopsis: In this psychological horror, high schooler Asagi finds herself descending into madness when her friend Satake suddenly dies in a strange way and an eerie atmosphere swallows her up, all while her classmates simply continue their everyday routines.
Light, Noise, Smoke, and Light, Noise, Smoke (Dir: Tomonari Nishikawa, 2023, 6 mins.)
Zuremingu (Dir: Ranmaru Usui, 1976, 4 mins.)
Here’s a previous coverage stretching back over a decade!