Osaka Asian Film Festival 2024 (OAFF) will run from March 01st to March 10th. Following on from my overview post, this one will round up all of the Japanese films that will be screened with the synopses. Some entries will feature a bit more information on the filmmakers, some of whom I’ve interviewed already, and some comments on the titles.
2024 sees the Osaka Asian Film Festival reach 19 years of operation and it remains one of the best festivals presenting the latest in Asian films. With its specific remit and themes/sections, it is a lot more focussed than other festivals and much easier to navigate. It continues to bring highly-lauded works from the festival circuit to Japanese audiences as well as ushering new voices on to the world stage and spotlighting filmmaking trends for cinemagoers to watch out for.
As an example… Attendees can watch The Missing, a rotoscoped drama that was the Philippine entry for the Best International Feature Film category at the 96th Academy Awards, A Journey in Spring, winner of the Silver Shell for Best Director at the San Sebastian International Film Festival, and Solids by the Seashore, which won two awards at Busan. All from new directors and all addressing a variety of social issues, from environmentalism to care for the elderly.
Interested in the cinematic output of the Philippines, Taiwan, and Hong Kong?
OAFF has got you!
Indeed, I cannot think of another festival that puts as much consistent effort into these regions and more as there are also representative titles from smaller cinema industries like Cambodia’s (Tenement) and Indonesia (13 Bombs).
In terms of its support for Japan, OAFF remains a leader with a strong indie section that has younger and newer voices as well as nods to more experienced directors.
If I had to give a general impression, they are all very well made and show creatives with so much talent. There is some social commentary with two offerings, Blue Imagine and Performing KAORU’s Funeral. They offer pointed criticism of how women are treated in the film and television industry. However, the predominant topics are the perennial ones of family portraits and coming-of-age comedy/dramas. There are a few foreign takes on Japanese culture scattered amongst the titles, something which reflects the number of East Asian students in Japanese film schools. A general theme that stands out amongst these are some whip-smart and bruising takes on love and marriage where the confident writing and staging gives interesting characters and their lives.
OSAKA ASIAN FILM FESTIVAL 2024
Dates: March 01 – March 10
Venues: ABC Hall, Cine Libre Umeda, T-Joy Umeda, the Nakanoshima Museum of Art, Osaka, 1st Floor (more details on each venue here)
Tickets: They will go on sale from February 21st.
Competition
においが眠るまで 「Nioi ga Nemuru Made」
Release Date: 2024
Duration: 92 mins.
Director: Kahori Higashi
Writer: Kahori Higashi, Yuichi Nagatsuma (Screenplay),
Starring: Reira Ikeda, Shun Aoi, Mary Sara, Chizuru Asano, Toshihiro Yashiba,
Kahori Higashi is a rising director who announced herself with Melting Sounds (interview) and The Residents, the former of which went from OAFF to Nippon Connection. She has a delicate and melancholy style and she brings it here with this Competition film that has a real dusk-like quality to it, an end of the day downbeat feel that you have to let wash over you.
High school girl Hinoki has a keen sense of smell. Perhaps it has something to do with her father, who ran a coffee bean roasting store. This sets the quiet and contemplative girl apart from others. When she reads a notebook left behind by her late father, she discovers that he had written his impressions of the films he had seen at mini-theatres across Japan. However, one mini theatre, the location of which is unmarked, has notes on smells and impressions. Inspired to find it (and without telling her mother), Hinoki decides to venture forth and visit the cinemas her father had visited, handing out coffee beans to people she meets, all while searching for her father’s fading scent. As she does so, over the course of her laidback and slightly melancholy adventure she becomes a little more mature.
スノードロップ 「Suno-doroppu」
Release Date: 2024
Duration: 98 mins.
Director: Kota Yoshida
Writer: Kota Yoshida (Screenplay),
Starring: Aki Nishihara, Haruhi Ito, Rao Onozuka, Naoko Miya, Kensuke Ashihara,
Kota Yoshida has been featured at festivals ever since his short Oneechan, ototo to iku! (2006), which received the Jury Special Award at Yubari International Fantastic Film Festival 2008. Other films of his include Yuriko’s Aroma (2010), Love Disease (2018), and Sexual Drive (2021).
Snowdrop stands apart from those titles, a serious slow-burn social commentary that has themes of care for the elderly and the strains on/of the welfare system. It features a knock-out performance from Aki Nishihara.
In a story told straight and with restraint we watch Naoko Hanami. She quit her job to look after her dementia-stricken mother Kiyo while the health of her father, Eiji, worsens with age. Struggling alone, she presents a stoic face to the world, too quiet and maybe too scared to speak up for herself. Finally, she turns to the city office to apply for welfare which is where caseworker Munemura, a genuine and sympathetic person, starts to investigate Naoko to see if she qualifies for help.
As Naoko’s life is described on screen, the details broach topics and fill in social context to make her situation more relatable while also being topical as the theme of elder care and public welfare are explored. Powerful acting from the entire cast, led by an absorbing NISHIHARA Aki as Naoko, makes the character’s plight deeply moving.
水深ゼロメートルから 「Suishin Zero Me-toru Kara」
Release Date: 2024
Duration: 87 mins.
Director: Nobuhiro Yamashita
Writer: Yukema Nakata (Screenplay),
Starring: Saki Hamao, Reia Nakayoshi, Mikuri Kiyoya, Sumire Hanaoka,
Nobuhiro Yamashita (The Drudgery Train) brings a laidback drama/comedy based on a school play. It doesn’t have the acerbic wit or dark misanthropy of his other, earlier works but the summertime atmosphere and gentle conflicts play out like a low-key On the Edge of Their Seats.
It is summer vacation but high schoolers Kokoro and Miku have been instructed by their PE teacher, Yamamoto, to clean the swimming pool. The pool has been drained of water and it is covered with sand from the baseball team’s field next door. Thus, under the blazing sun, they are meant to sweep the sand but distractions abound as Chizuru and Yui join them and stray in their path. Together, they initially discuss school life, love and makeup but it isn’t long before their worries begin to overflow and their thoughts intersect…
Swimming in a Sand Pool presents a coming-of-age drama laced with deadpan comedy that begins at the bottom of the pool. Its origins lie in an original work by the Tokushima City High School Drama Club making this the second film project based on a high school play following On the Edge of Their Seats (Dir: JOJO Hideo, OAFF2020).
Indie Forum
うぉっしゅ 「Uosshu」
Release Date: 2024
Duration: 114 mins.
Director: Ikunosuke Okazaki
Writer: Ikunosuke Okazaki (Screenplay),
Starring: Yuuka Nakao, Ken Naoko, Kazuya Shimasa, Naoko Takagi, Maki Isonishi,
This is a smart and slickly made film from a definite talent. It’s the sophomore feature of Ikunosuke Okazaki and it is precision-crafted in delivering its themes of elder care and human connection via two lead characters, an elderly woman and her granddaughter. It has a fun “pop” aesthetic that captures youth culture and, at the very least, it will teach viewers new slang.
“The ‘sukebe stool’ that is used in soaplands to wash bodies was actually invented as a home care tool.” This anecdote, and experiences with having a grandmother with dementia, was director OKAZAKI’s inspiration for a film featuring a novel spin on a carer for the elderly.
Although it pays for her glamorous lifestyle, Kana keeps her job washing bodies in a Tokyo soapland quiet and has questions about her future. That job comes in handy when she is asked to care for her long-forgotten grandmother Kie. After initial struggles, Kana’s biggest frustration is that Kie’s dementia means she forgets her own granddaughter after every visit but Kana soon realises that Kie is someone she can confide in about her life and resolves to learn more about the elderly woman that she had forgotten about while working out what bugs her.
Wash Away is a smart and slickly-made character drama done through synthesising two unlikely sources and applying a serious message of how loneliness can afflict people and how genuinely connecting with others can overcome that.
すとん 「Suton」
Release Date: 2024
Duration: 41 mins.
Director: Rikako Watanabe
Writer: Rikako Watanabe (Screenplay),
Starring: Chie Sakamoto, Mai Murakami, Atsushi Honma, Yujiro Hara, Miki Igarashi.
Rikako Watanabe is an actress who has experience on the production side of things on smaller projects. For her film, she deploys a non-linear narrative to succinctly capture the life of a woman whose acting career was disrupted by Covid.
The main character, perched between youth and middle age, finds herself facing existential questions that will resonate with a wide range of people.
Suton is a kind of sound used to describe coming to an “understanding” or “settling” something.
The story starts when the main character, a woman living alone in Tokyo, begins working at a neighborhood café. Her life seems placid, but an encounter with a customer triggers an avalanche of memories from her past, revealing the background of the bitter consequences of having her work cancelled because of COVID-19, the effect of which affected her mental health and cut short her career as an actress. Now that she has reached her bottom and settled, she begins to live life without a script and absorbs the words and ways of life of the people she meets. Succinctly shot vignettes and agile leaps between place and time make this a touching character study marked by poignancy over ideas such as aging and separation but also the warmth of her connections with others.
オン・ア・ボート 「On A Bo-to」
Release Date: 2024
Duration: 32 mins.
Director: Heso
Writer: Heso (Screenplay),
Starring: Kiyohiko Shibukawa, Ryo Matsuura, Nairu Yamamoto, Yuuka Nakao, Sayaka Wada, Anna Melody,
Director Heso deploys the sort of precise direction and gets perfectly-calibrated performances from leads Kiyohiko Shibukawa and Ryo Matsuura to gift us an experience akin to seeing absolute acid biting through the screen. It is done via a toxic relationship, specifically the male side of things as Shibukawa plays a man who initially seems nebbish but has the sort of hidden anger that is scary.
Have you ever met a couple and thought, “what do they see in each other?”
Perhaps people who make up such couples never really look at each other to begin with. This might be the case with SARA and CHU. He is 12 years older than her and, thanks to him, SARA now has a new home. SARA just has to be in love because CHU seems nice but exhibits possessive behaviour. Everything in his house has to be “just so” otherwise he gets petty and vindictive. SARA has a difficult night ahead as a house-warming party with her “friends” takes a nasty turn when CHU realises that SARA and co cannot be managed like objects…
On a Boat offers a tightly-shot polite-but-savage mask-pull experience that will make you squirm in your seat as a petty little man unravels in the face of a wife he cannot control and the humiliation he puts his wife and himself through.
愛の茶番 「Ai no Chaban」
Release Date: 2024
Duration: 120 mins.
Director: Junko Emoto
Writer: Junko Emoto (Screenplay),
Starring: Runa Endo, Ami Tomite, Yuki Sugawara, Ryo Iwase, Kosuke Fujita, Sumihiro Yoshikawa, Kiyobumi Kaneko, Akihito Kajiya, Tomonori Mikan,
This is two hours of comedy based on watching characters blinded by love acting out in the most excruciatingly embarrassing way. The cast all commit to the bit with such gusto that it’s hard not to be sucked into the maelstrom of madness and bitterness and the “staging” makes it all the more fun.
Love makes fools of us all.
Such is the case with Rumi, her sister Aki, and a woman named Rie. The three are tied to Ryosuke, a laid-back lothario who likes to love and leave ladies. Rumi and Aki were never on the same wavelength as arrogant Aki has dreams of stardom and despises the riotous Rumi but sharing a lover makes their relationship worse and sharpens their cruelty to each other. Meanwhile the mousy Rie is cast adrift and left seeking love from increasingly disappointing quarters. Over the course of seven years, other would-be lovers get ensnared in their tangle of relationships that, to viewers, looks absent of romance and full of embarrassment.
Theatre troupe leader EMOTO Junko combines stage and cinema with It Must Be Love, a work in which she and her ensemble cast opened the movie site/stage to an “audience” and utilised them and their ideas to make a multiple-perspective/timeline cringe-comedy of love sending people loopy.
Release Date: 2024
Duration: 115 mins.
Director: Chris Rudz
Writer: Chris Rudz, Tobiasz Piatkowsko (Screenplay),
Starring: Miru Nagase, Junko Kano, Tatsuro Kawano, Sandy Kai, Pierre Taki,
Polish director Chris Rudz shows his long experience as a cinematographer in this film which is almost always beautiful to watch.
There are many elements of Japanese culture cleverly combined into a slickly-made feature that will resonate with anyone who has lived on the internet – it takes in the trend for city pop and spunky school girls. At its heart is a somewhat affecting family drama. It gains from having assured performances from veteran Pierre Taki (The Devil’s Path) and relative newcomer Miru Nagase (familiar from the fantastic short Last Judgement). The comedic performance of Sandy Kai (Whole) is another highlight.
When 17-year-old Natsumi departs Tokyo for the sun-kissed tiny island her mother fled, it is with the intention of reconnecting with her mother’s twin sister, Reiko. The two were ama-san (traditional pearl divers) of such note that they earned the moniker of “mermaids.” However, Natsumi turning up on her aunt’s doorstep unannounced unleashes a tidal wave of resentment from Reiko as bitter memories are dredged up. Still, Natsumi is undeterred and dives into the local culture with the aim of healing family wounds while also getting herself out of some trouble. A slickly-made and warm-hearted family drama buoyed up by ama culture and 80s City Pop ensues.
走れない人の走り方 「Hashirenai Hito no Hasiri-kata」
Release Date: 2024
Duration: 83 mins.
Director: Su Yu-chun
Writer: Su Yu-chun (Screenplay),
Starring: Nairu Yamamoto, Saori, Ryusei Isoda, Ryuzaburo Hattori, BEBE,
This is top-tier work within the realm of a student graduation film. It’s probably an example of “write what you know” from the perspective of Taiwanese director Su Yu-chun. She was studying filmmaking in Japan and seems to have caught many aspects of the production process. Maybe not the motivations for film but that’s another matter.
A film about making films, we follow the exploits of Kiriko, an indie film director who is struggling to make a road movie that ends on a beach. Why do so many independent films have to have a beach scene? That is a question that gets asked along the way but her journey to the location is beset with difficulties, from budget to casting. There is only so much she can do and so she inches forward making compromises and finding ways around problems to realise her dream, all while living in the real world and fulfilling obligations to others as best she can.
Indeed, a film isn’t often made by one person alone and, breaking the tendency of the genre to focus on an enfant terrible or a wunderkind, Inch Forward convincingly shows collaboration through the people around Kiriko. From producer Takimoto who tries to hash out ideas, to actors seeking to understand a character Kiriko has in her head but not on the page, Inch Forward uses multiple perspectives to portray people who live with cinema in a warm and wry manner.
胴鳴り 「Dounari」
Release Date: 2024
Duration: 110 mins.
Director: Yu Kajino
Writer: Yu Kajino (Screenplay),
Starring: Ryuta Furuya, Nanami Mitsuya, Ai Sasamine, Takuo Inari, Noriko Kohara,
18-year-old Hikaru has just graduated from high school and she has travelled alone from Niigata to Tokyo to meet the father she has never known without telling her mother. Her parents originally met in Shinjuku but after parting, her mother Mayumi left the city and gave birth to and raised Hikaru alone while her father Naohide stayed put and became a scriptwriter of a hit TV romance drama. Despite being able to imagine and write moving works of fiction, the reality of having an illegitimate child leaves him bewildered and, out of guilt, he tries to get involved in Hikaru’s life again while balancing responsibilities to his current girlfriend and avoiding upsetting Mayumi.
What transpires is a road movie shot amidst beautiful scenery like Niigata and Oiso over four seasons. It offers a contemplative and somewhat sad look at the idea of “ties that bind,” be they blood or love, and how they have their limits and loneliness lurks, ready to swallow characters up.
スミコ22 「Sumiko 22」
Release Date: 2024
Duration: 65 mins.
Director: Sawako Fukuoka
Writer: Sawako Fukuoka (Screenplay),
Starring: Haruna Hori, Satsuki Hamada, Shohei Matsuo, Kyoshiro Hara,
Can you remember the OAFF 2023 title When Morning Comes, I Feel Empty? It won the Japan Cuts award. Well, imagine that film but done with a sense of humour.
Sumiko 22 is the latest work by the filmmaking unit Shidoromodori and features Haruna Hori in her first film role in five years.
We follow Sumiko Shizuoka, a twenty-something-year-old who quit her first job just after four months. Her new life is spent recalibrating her sense of self.
How does she do this?
In a series of chuckle-inducing vignettes based on director Sawako Fukuoka’s own experiences, we see the realistic struggles of Sumiko who spends her days talking to herself and others about ideas, both vague and specific, that ultimately drive her towards what she finds important – mostly her cat Okoge and the foods she likes – and how she wants to live her life.
りりかの星 「Ririka no Hoshi」
Release Date: 2024
Duration: 28 mins.
Director: Tokitoshi Shiota
Writer: Tokitoshi Shiota (Screenplay),
Starring: Ryuichi Hiroki, Kana Mito, Takashi Miike,
This is kind of a tongue-in-cheek short where director Tokitoshi Shiota is clearly calling in old friends to work on the property.
Everyone has a dream. For Moe, it is to be a stripper, much to her father’s objections as he resents her unknowingly living up to the legacy of her absent mother. Is there something that can change his mind? Perhaps seeing the art of stripping for himself…
This is long-time actor, critic, programmer SHIOTA’s directorial debut and he has gathered together experienced talent such as cinematographer ASHIZAWA Akiko behind the camera and veteran directors HIROKI Ryuichi and MIIKE Takashi in front of the camera. The result is a tongue-in-cheek silent film that invites viewers to experience the magic of stripping as the tastefully-shot climactic moment is given full sound and dazzling visuals to celebrate the beauty of the nude body.
カオルの葬式 「Kaoru no Soshiki」
Release Date: 2021
Duration: 100 mins.
Director: Noriko Yuasa
Writer: Takato Nishi (Screenplay),
Starring: Koji Seki, Kano Ichiki, Chise Niitsu, Asuka Kurosawa, Daijiro Harada, Tomomitsu Adachi,
This is the sophomore feature of Noriko Yuasa, a filmmaker who impressed me at OAFF 2018 with Ordinary Everyday and whose other films I have reviewed AND who I’ve interviewed. I wrote about this film, when Yuasa launched the Kickstarter to secure funding. In the notes, she stated that the story is based on her experience of losing her friend and it looks like it is combined with her experience in the movie world. The result is a blackly comic drama of the friends, family, lovers, and rivals of a TV writer crashing together at a funeral. It’s told in a non-linear manner from the perspective of the deceased and some of the people who knew her and I found it to be a perfectly acted film that explores all sorts of themes, from being a woman and facing challenges in work to the faults of the film/television industry.
When a screenwriter named KAORU dies suddenly, she leaves behind a tangle of relations who are all pulled together for the final act in her life: performing her funeral. The chief mourner is her ex-husband, Jun. A failed actor, he drifts around Tokyo as a driver for callgirls. He has to clean himself up to lead the ceremony down in the small village in Okayama that KAORU came from. There, he meets a host of eccentric characters, TV people, and KAORU ’s daughter, all of whom have complicated feelings for the recently departed. Performing Kaoru’s funeral will be difficult for Jun as he finds himself facing a tough crowd but, through these people’s memories, different aspects of the woman will be revealed.
Black comedy and poignant sights of grief emerge as concise scenes rich with distinctive characters and well-orchestrated flashbacks play out while the funeral rumbles on. It is almost as if KAORU had scripted the event herself.
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. Each of her works has a #MeToo theme and this is the most explicit and thorough examination of it yet. 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.
Synopsis: Noel is an aspiring actress who has maintained her silence as a rape victim. When she finds a share 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.
Before Anyone Else [short film]
Release Date: 2023
Duration: 20 mins.
Director: Tetsuya Mariko
Writer: Gregory Collins, Tetsuya Mariko (Screenplay),
Starring: Akiyo Komatsu (Jimmy), Chloe Skoczen (Lex), Kenzo Yeung (Kai), Diego Torrado (Theo), Bridget Painter (Magda)
Before Anyone Else is a Japanese-American co-production directed by Tetsuya Mariko. Perhaps best known in the West for portraits of disaffected Japanese youth in Destruction Babies and From Miyamoto to You, his shift to an American setting is a surprise but like those films, Before Anyone Else deals with similar themes of abuse, trauma, and dispossessed people in indifferent societies. It played at the Chicago International Film Festival and that city is the setting for the film. I reviewed the film here and interviewed director Mariko here.
The story concerns a couple, Jimmy (Akiyo Komatsu) and Lex (Chloe Skoczen). Both are skateboarders scraping by in the world as small-time thieves. After knocking over a pawn shop, they happen across an abandoned car with a pistol in the glove compartment and a child in the back. Jimmy claims both, much to Lex’s consternation and the audience’s sense of peril as the principle of Chekhov’s gun comes into play.
Special Presentations
This section will present films that are topical or beautiful.
あまろっく 「Amarokku」
Release Date: April 19th, 2024
Duration: 119 mins.
Director: Kazuhiro Nakamura
Writer: Nobuko Nishii (Screenplay),
Starring: Noriko Eguchi, Ayami Nakajo, Tsurube Shofukutei, Satoru Matsuo, Yuri Nakamura
I was baffled with this one but it will hopefully prove a hit with local audiences because it takes place in the Kansai region and features Yoshimoto Kogyo comedy.
39-year-old Yuko is a high-achieving and proud woman whose career ambitions took her from a sleepy part of Amagasaki City, to Tokyo. When she loses her job due to her “high standards” attitude, she loses her drive to do anything and ends up retreating to her family home where she lives as a NEET with her laidback joker of a father, Ryutaro. For years, the two get along until her 70-something old man brings home Saki, his 20-year-old bride-to-be. When the younger woman shacks up with the two, a comedy of manners based, quite understandably, on a scandalised Yuko’s “you’re not my mom!” attitude ensues as the younger woman takes to mothering her but when crises occur, Yuko truly begins to evaluate just what a family can be.
Inspired by the city of his birth and the “Amagasaki lock gate,” which protects from flood damage, director NAKAMURA crafts an easygoing and sentimental comedy that shows how love and family are constancy and reliability.
カミノフデ ～怪獣たちのいる島～ 「Kami no fude ~ Kaiju-tachi no iru shima ~」
Release Date: 2024
Duration: 74 mins.
Director: Keizo Murase
Writer: Ken Nakazawa (Screenplay),
Starring: Rio Suzuki, Takeru Narahara,
Brush of the God is billed as the first and last movie by MURASE Keizo, the veteran sculptor, suitmaker who has made monster suits for many tokusatsu and kaiju classics including Godzilla, Gamera, and Kamen Rider.
His story follows a schoolgirl named Akari Tokimiya and the fantastical adventure which occurs when she visits the memorial service of her grandfather Kenzo, a master special effects man. She has unhappy memories of the old man and his passion projects, the last of which he died during the making of. At the memorial service, she meets classmate Takuya, a tokusatsu superfan, and a strange person named Hozumi, the star of the movie Kenzo was making when he died. Hozumi has with him a prop from the film, the titular “Brush of the God,” which transports Akari and Takuya into the world of the movie where they face fearsome Kaiju, including the legendary Yamata-no-orochi who is attempting to destroy everything. If they are to survive and get back to their homes, Akari and Takuya must find out the secret of the movie.
Nakanoshima Museum of Art Screenings
(Free Admission)
A really exciting screening is 240 Hours in One Day, the last cinematic collaboration between Hiroshi Teshigahara and writer Kobo Abe. It was once thought lost but was rediscovered and yet has been screened a few (literally FEW) times. There will be a lecture following the screening.
Housen Cultural Foundation
The Housen Cultural Foundation supports film study and production in graduate schools. This year, there are four films which received funding in the fiscal year of 2022, and three films that won awards for undergraduate graduation films.
This part of the festival always has a gems that are worth watching and they are free to view for anyone who has the time to go to Nakanoshima Museum of Art.
Housen Cultural Foundation-Supported Program (Grant for Film Study and Production)
彼方の家族 「Kanata no Kazoku」
Release Date: 2024
Duration: 82 mins.
Director: Taro Kawasaki, Eisuke Sakauchi
Writer: Eisuke Sakauchi (Screenplay),
Starring: Yukihiro Aizawa, Masato Yamauchi, Yuki Watanabe, Yuta Watanabe, Tomoki Kimura,
Every house has a front door and behind every door is a family drama.
For main protagonist Kanata, he and his mother have relocated from Fukushima to a new area, sans the father who they lost during an earthquake when he was a child. As he is wont to do, he pushes people away, uncertain of how to talk about his old man until he meets Riku, the son of his much-admired homeroom teacher. Gradually won over by Riku’s brightness, Kanata finally begins to open up and discovers another boy living in the shadow of his father.
Faraway Family is a story about trauma and its inheritance, all wrapped in a 3/11 storyline that ably links dramas from Kanata’s past and present to show how the ideal of a “family” is often out of reach and we can never really know what is going on in a person’s life until they let us in.
ハーフタイム [中場休息] 「Ha-fu Taimu [Nakaba Kyuusoku]」
Release Date: 2024
Duration: 29 mins.
Director: Zhang Yaoyuan
Writer: Zhang Yaoyuan (Screenplay),
Starring: Tsuyoshi Abe,
The precarious position of technical interns in Japan is examined in Half Time, ZHANG Yaoyuan’s unsentimental follow-up film to his behind-the-show-biz-scenes documentary On Stage (2021, OAFF2022).
For Half Time, ZHANG applies a realist aesthetic to focus on the hardship of a Chinese technical intern named Qingyang. His fortunes had already been trending downwards before he reached Japan. Now, at 39 and with a kid to support in China, debts to pay off, a lack of Japanese language proficiency, and despicable brokers guiding him, he labours under a lot of stress and yet tries his best to secure a job, any job, in a series of humiliating interviews orchestrated by people keen to exploit him. Desperation, degradation, and discrimination build up as a final interview approaches and his patience runs out…
Duration: 27 mins.
Director: Masaru Sano
Writer: N/A
Starring: Minori Fujidera, Akari Takaishi,
This one was played as part of a double-bill with director Sano’s previous short, Women in the Zoo a few weeks ago. That title actually played at OAFF 2023, so it’s nice to see him return and he has brought a corker of a title that is visually resplendent. Indeed, the film reminded me of the Chihiro Ito anti-romance In Her Room (GREAT FILM), simply because of all of the indoor foliage.
Synopsis: Ayaka is in hospital and the news is not good: due to arteriosclerosis she will lose her legs. While she still can, she paces the leafy hospital surroundings in search of a suicide spot. She finds the perfect tree, one with a sturdy branch from which to hang herself. Just as she loops a noose around her neck, she is interrupted by a mysterious patient named Yoshino. This slightly macabre girl is also afflicted by a disease, but a fantastical one that will see her turn into a tree. Even though Ayaka is surrounded by death, disease, and defective bodies, Yoshino’s intervention leads her to cling on to life, no matter how absurd.
SANO offers a highly engaging film, both visually and aurally, as it presents surreal scenes. Underlying it is a message about adapting to maintain life and appreciating it in its many forms. The plant-based set design, atmospheric lighting, off-kilter framing, dreamy/ominous piano score, and pitch-perfect performances offer an odd but affecting life-affirming tale.
女子と男子 「Josh to Danshi」
Release Date: 2024
Duration: 45 mins.
Director: Satoru Hirohara
Writer: N/A
Starring: N/A
Satoru Hirohara has featured at OAFF twice before (at least) with Girl Returned (2017, OAFF 2018) and Silent Movie (OAFF 2023) and he is back with Girls and Boys. It’s a medium-length film that offers some interesting ideas on gender roles and also some beautiful sights.
Six junior high school students are forced to clean a playhouse and are offered the chance to act out a story where genders are reversed. What will happen during and after this time?
Director HIROHARA has made a career following youngsters and with this short he bravely entrusts the teen cast to work out their roles through workshops and improvisation. Due to the setting and the players, the testing of boundaries and manipulation of character, there are echoes of SOMAI Shinji’s Typhoon Club (1987), albeit on a much smaller, gentler scale. However, the mix of documentary elements where the children explain themselves and the natural beauty of the theatre setting and the surrounding town makes it a feast for the mind as well as the eyes.
Housen Cultural Foundation-Supported Program (Commendation for Student Films)
ふれる 「Fureru」
Release Date: 2024
Duration: 15 mins.
Director: Kyosuke Takada
Writer: Kyosuke Takada (Screenplay),
Starring: Yui Suzuki, Yasuro Kono, Karin Nishina, Matsuoka, Yasuko Yoshida,
Misaki is a fourth grader who is still processing the loss of her mother. Her eccentric behaviour sometimes upsets those around her, especially her absence from school as she begins to hang out at a ceramic artist’s studio. She shows a keen interest in the art but before another momentous change is about to happen in her life, she runs away from home and embarks on an odyssey that will take her deep into the country to reconnect with a precious person.
Director TAKADA’s graduation work from Nihon University College of Art, Touch is an aesthetically assured short that features a visual and aural polish from ICHIKAWA Yuichi’s cinematography and DATE Chiya’s music that amplifies excellent performances from the cast.
アスク・フォー・ザ・ムーン 「Asuku Fo- Za Mu-n」
Release Date: 2022
Duration: 46 mins.
Director: Taishi Oishi
Writer: Hideto Tsutsumi (Screenplay),
Starring: Manae, Yusuke Akiba, Yu Taniguchi, Hito:michan, Mika Natsume,
This one has an intriguing set-up and doesn’t ever go where you expect it to. Lead actress Manae has a distinct presence: unpleasant but still sympathetic. You end up feeling for her in the end and the absurdist/magical strain of humour that runs through it makes the film different from the rest of the pack.
“I’ll fly in my own way.”
University senior, Tomoko Miura longs to be a film director but help is in short supply as her curt attitude and selfishness pushes people away. Driving her is an inferiority complex linked to her recently-deceased “perfect” older sister. Fed up with failure, Tomoko decides to “retake” her life as if it were a movie. The next take will start with a leap from a bridge…
Ask for the Moon plays out like It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) by way of an unhinged wannabe-movie director who gets repeated takes on her life (and death). It goes through multiple iterations of suicide and supernatural intervention to push a tale of self-discovery with a slight mystery and it has a visual playfulness and boisterous acting that undercuts the darkness and poignancy that dog the film through its rough, though sympathy-earning, lead protagonist.
花心 ファーシン 「Huaxin Fa-shin」
Release Date: 2023
Duration: 88 mins.
Director: Miku Yasumoto
Writer: Miku Yasumoto (Screenplay),
Starring: Kotaro Kishimizu, Suzuha, Kazuhiro Suzuki, Miwa Shimatani, Remi Tokioka,
This one is a slow-burn and seems heartfelt. It really takes its time but it is rich in atmosphere and shows that Miku Yasumoto has the drive to make interesting films. It was fun seeing her selected since I’ve written about her as part of coverage of smaller festivals.
Yuji found his photographer grandfather Tetsuro an inspirational man. He taught the lad about the art of cameras, their use, and their power. Yuji comes to regret taking Tetsuro’s picture after being warned that cameras can steal souls and the old man passes away. His death puts Yuji in touch with Rei, Tetsuro’s muse. Gradually, the two drift to meeting at Tetsuro’s studio where the detritus of a life once lived offers comfort. It is there that Rei tells Yuji, “take a picture of me and kill me”.
YASUMOTO Miku’s third feature film feels like an assured and personal work. It demands patience and rewards a viewer with a rich atmosphere of two people emerging from a stasis via the cocoon-like atmosphere of the studio while under the guidance of memory and artistic passion.
Closing Film
There will be the Awards and Closing Ceremony prior to this screening.
東京カウボーイ 「Tokyo Kaubo-i」
Release Date: June, 2024
Duration: 118 mins.
Director: Marc Marriott
Writer: Dave Boyle, Ayako Fujitani (Screenplay),
Starring: Arata Iura, Goya Robles, Ayako Fujitani, Robin Weigert, Jun Kunimura, Scout Smith,
Website Twitter: @tokyocowboyfilm IMDB
City slickers done Tokyo style. Tokyo Cowboy comes from Marc Marriott, a director who studied film in Japan under Yoji Yamada. It is a drama-comedy that works because of a good synthesis of eastern and western culture.
It should come as no surprise as the production side of things features Dave Boyle and Ayako Fujitani who are collaborators on other culture-combination works such as The Man From Reno. On screen are the great Jun Kunimura and Arata Iura and Ayako Fujitani so the acting is assured and the film generally has a feel good atmosphere boosted by the glorious vistas of Montana.
Synopsis: Hideki is a businessman looking to turn a struggling cattle ranch into profit-turner with a plan to sell Wagyu beef, all while juggling plans to marry his long-term girlfriend, his co-worker Keiko. To do this, he switches environments and flies from Tokyo’s forest of skyscrapers to Montana’s wide plains. Under the big skies, he makes the mistakes expected of city slickers, such as stiff sartorial decisions like keeping his salaryman suit on to falling off horses that ruin said suit. However, in his efforts to win over sceptical ranch hands and friendly locals, he learns to loosen up and appreciate the people he meets and understand the places he is in, thus helping him grow.
An easy-going and big-hearted adventure about overcoming cultural boundaries, it is filmed with a wide scope for beautiful landscapes and the pleasant characters who inhabit them, the whole experience is pleasing and it might inspire people to go to Montana and try the cowboy way of life.
Okay. That’s it from me for now. I hope this preview helps people find films. I’ll be reviewing some and also interviewing directors so please come back to see what gets cooked up. Tickets will go on sale from February 21st.