This year’s San Sebastian International Film Festival runs from September 20th to the 28th and they have announced their selection of films, a number of which come from high-profile filmmakers and indie wunderkinds. The selection is varied and interesting so…
What are the Japanese films?
クラウド 「Kuraudo」
Release Date: September 27th, 2024
Duration: 123 mins.
Director: Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Writer: Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Screenplay),
Starring: Masaki Suda, Kotone Furukawa, Masataka Kubota, Daiken Okudaira, Amane Okayama, Yoshiyoshi Arakawa, Maho Yamada, Tetsuya Chiba, Yutaka Matsushige,
Website Twitter: @cloudmovie2024 IMDB
This is the third Kurosawa film to get a release this year following on from Chime and a remake of Serpent’s Path (which plays in September at San Sebastian). It features a great cast, including Yutaka Matsushige, the antagonist in Kurosawa’s The Guard From Underground.
Synopsis: Yoshii is a factory worker who makes a bit on the side by reselling goods, an occupation he learned from Muraoka, a senior student at a technical college he want to. The reselling business gets so good that he turns down a promotion at the factory and expands his business but just as things start to look good, suspicious events begin to occur around Yoshii and he becomes the target of hatred on the internet that turns into a collective madness and a “hunting game”.
Serpent’s Path (2024) / Le chemin du serpent 
蛇の道 「Hebi no Michi」
Release Date: June 14th, 2024
Duration: 116 mins.
Director: Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Writer: Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Hiroshi Takahashi (Screenplay),
Starring: Mathieu Amalric, Ko Shibasaki, Damien Bonnard, Hidetoshi Nishijima, Munetaka Aoki,
Website Twitter: @Funnys_movie JFDB IMDB
Kiyoshi Kurosawa remakes his own film Serpent’s Path (1998) and sets it in Paris and casts French actors alongside Kou Shibasaki (who came to fame two years later with Battle Royale), who speaks French in her role.
Synopsis: A freelance journalist named Albert Bachelet seeks to avenge his 8-year-old daughter, who was brutally murdered. He is aided by a mysterious psychiatrist named Sayoko Niijima, who is willing to help him abduct people with connections to a shady organisation…
ユリシーズ 「Yurishi-zu」
Release Date: 2024
Duration: 73 mins.
Director: Hikaru Uwagawa
Writer: Hikaru Uwagawa, (Screenplay),
Starring: Alevtina Tikhonova, Dimitri Tikhonov, Izumi Ishii, Enaitz Zulaika, Hikaru Uwagawa, Kazuko Hara
This was at the Marseille International Film Festival and information was on that site. One of the past works of the director is the 2019 short A Portrait of the Young Man as a Young Man which, when coupled with this feature’s title, indicates his fascination with James Joyce.
The accompanying interview on the festival site reveals he also makes links directly to Homer’s “The Odyssey”. It’s all in the drawn comparisons between himself, as an immigrant studying filmmaking in Spain experiencing his ambivalent feelings to being abroad from home, and Ulysses who may have felt similar emotions. Therefore, he made this film as a parody of Homer’s Odyssey in a way that James Joyce did with his novel.
The interview is fascinating and goes on to describe the artistic process, including further influences and not using a script but relying on a diary, dictionaries, collages, and more to guide the film. This is a three-part film and it was partly shot in San Sebastian and the director’s own grandmother features in it.
Synopsis: This film contains the stories of three groups of people living in Spain and Japan and each story, despite being standalone, are joined together by ideas of displacement and longing for home. The first is set in Madrid and concerns a young Russian woman who has lived alone with her eight-year-old son ever since her husband left them to “hunt for treasure”. We are next taken to San Sebastian where a Japanese traveller spends time with a young Basque woman and enters her life briefly. The final story is set in Maniwa, Japan, and a young man returns to his family home for the Obon ceremony in honour of his grandfather.
Release Date: September 27th, 2024
Duration: 95 mins.
Director: Kohei Igarashi
Writer: Kohei Igarashi, Koichi Kudobera (Screenplay),
Starring: Hiroki Sano, Nairu Yamamoto, Yoshinori Miyata, Hoang Nhu Quynh,
Kohei Igarashi, director of Hold Your Breath Like Lover (2014), finds his latest work as the opener to the 2024 Venice Days (Giornate Degli Autori) programme. A story of a man dealing with grief at a holiday resort that looks as if it is told with subtlety and wryness, there is a review by Guy Lodge over at Variety that states something of our chances of seeing it:
This Gallic-Japanese co-production will burnish Igarashi’s reputation on the festival circuit, though it may be too low-key for theatrical distribution in many markets — its youthful slant and quiet formal simplicity make it a viable fit for specialist streaming platforms.
The most recognisable name from the cast is Nairu Yamamoto who appeared in two Osaka Asian Film Festival 2024 titles: On a Boat and Inch Forward.
Synopsis: On August 19, 2023, childhood friends Sano and Miyata spend time in Atami at a seaside resort hotel that is scheduled to close soon. It is the place where Sano met and fell in love with his wife Nagi five years previously. In the intervening time, she died in her sleep and Sano has been consumed with grief. At the resort, Miyata, unable to see Sano’s obsession with memories of his wife, tries to help him out with a date and activities but Sano is consumed with searching for the red cap he gave to Nagi before the two left the resort.
Two Japanese films are in the Culinary Zinema section and two chefs from Northern Food Story, Tsuyoshi Takahashi (Le Santé) and Hiroshi Sakai (Ajidokoro), will be on hand to make food.
北の食景 「Kita no shokukei」
Release Date: N/A
Duration: 102 mins.
Director: Tetsuya Uesugi
Writer: N/A
Starring: Kaori Yoshida, Junnosuke Kawasaki, Hiroshi Sakai, Tsuyoshi Takahashi,
Tetsuya Uesugi’s documentary follows the daily lives of four chefs and their local communities in Hokkaido as we follow their daily lives, collecting ingredients from out in the wild or from farms, in all four seasons, and also cooking! The chefs are Tsuyoshi Takahashi of the French restaurant “La Santé” and Kaori Yoshida of the French restaurant “Agriscape” in Sapporo, Hiroshi Sakai of “Ajidokoro” in Kuriyama, Junnosuke Kawasaki of the sushi restaurant “Maru Sushi” or ○鮨, in Sapporo.
グランメゾン・パリ 「Guran Meizon Pari」
Release Date: Winter 2024
Duration: 102 mins.
Director: Ayuko Tsukahara
Writer: Tsutomu Kuroiwa (Screenplay),
Starring: Takuya Kimura, Kyoka Suzuki, Taecyeon, Ayako Yoshitano, Ai Tominaga, Kanichiro Sato, Anne Nakamura,
Website Twitter: @gurame_tbs IMDB
This is a sequel to a TV drama and the cast and crew return but the setting has changed to Paris. The cooking scenes were supervised by Kei Kobayashi, a chef at Restaurant KEI, the first Asian chef to win three stars in France.
Synopsis: Following Grand Maison Tokyo earning three Michelin stars, chef Natsuki Obana and sous chef Rinko Hayami launch a new restaurant in Paris, the home of French cuisine. Obana finds it tough to adjust to his new surroundings and his relationships with his team members suffer and so he makes a promise to his former mentor that if he does not win three Michelin stars, he will quit the restaurant and leave France. Will the team be able to do it???
ピクニック 「Pikunikku」
Release Date: 2024
Duration: 20 mins.
Director: Yuki Hirata
Writer: N/A
Starring: Minami Ohba, Maki Nishiyama, So Sasaki, Miku Kamisaka,
Yuki Hirata, assistant director on Inch Forward, made this short while at Tokyo University of the Arts.
Synopsis: Ayano has joined her boyfriend Shuichi and his daughter Minato for a picnic but the atmosphere is awkward due to the presence of Minato’s dead mother, Miho who comes to each person in different ways…
Winter in Sokcho / Hiver a Sokcho
Release Date: N/A
Duration: 82 mins.
Director: Koya Kamura
Writer: Koya Kamura, Stephane Ly-Cuong (Screenplay), Elisa Shua Dusapin (Original Novel)
Starring: Roschdy Zem, Bella Kim
This one is based on an award-winning novel by French-Korean writer Elisa Shua Dusapin. This review makes it sound fascinating. Koya Kamura is a French-Japanese director who was born in Paris.
Synopsis: Winter has set in around the fishing town of Sokcho. The tourism trail has gone to sleep and the town is relatively close to the North Korean border, so people have extra reason to stay indoors. At a sleepy guesthouse is a woman of French-Korean descent who is has completed her university studies and is due to get married. Living with a certain diffidence, her life is unsatisfying but comes to life when a French graphic novelist looking for inspiration visits Sokcho. She acts as a guide for this man who is old enough to be her father and a tense, borderline romantic acquaintanceship ensues…
Japanese Films at the San Sebastian Film Festival 2023