The team behind the Osaka Asian Film Festival has given a glimpse of the entire programme of films that will play at this year’s edition and full details of the film which will close this year’s festival, the Word Premiere of Akihiro Toda’s “THE NAME (名前)” which will play at the ABC Hall on Sunday, March 18th.
Here are details on the film:
The Name 
名前 「Namae」
Running Time: 114 mins.
Release Date: 2018
Director: Akihiro Toda
Writer: Yusuke Moriguchi (Screenplay), Shusuke Michio (Original Story)
Starring: Kanji Tsuda, Ren Komai, Miho Kanazawa, Mako Komaki, Akari Kakimoto, Noriko Kijima, Yohta Kawase, Mayuko Nishiyama, Mariko Tsutsui,
Synopsis: Moriya city in Ibaraki is a quiet place with residents who lead simple lives. Everyone, apart from a lonely angst-ridden bachelor named Masao Nakamura. Since losing his business and becoming penniless, he has adopted multiple identities to get by: Yoshikawa, a big businessman, Suzuki, the happy family man, Okubo, the doting husband who quit Tokyo to look after a sick wife. When his ruse about the sick wife is about to be exposed as a lie at work, a schoolgirl named Emiko Hayama steps in from out of nowhere and pretends to be his daughter.
Emiko is another person who loves to lie. Instead of facing a lonely home run by a single-mother, the girl hangs out with Masao and the pair strike up a friendship. It fills a gap in their lives but their lies hinder them from overcoming inner-turmoil. At some point a fake dad and a fake daughter will have to face their suffering in order to move on.
“THE NAME” is a gentle dramedy film by the director Akihiro Toda who is known for “Neko ni mikan” He is active as a theatre director, scriptwriter and producer. The film’s script was adapted from a story by Naoki Prize-winning author MICHIO Shusuke Michio and the film stars Kanji Tsuda, a veteran actor who appears
in both the mainstream and independent film industries, and Ren Komai, “kokoronifukukaze”. The cinematographer is Kenichi Negishi, who is a regular collaborator with Koji Fukada.
Director Akihiro Toda was born in Nara in 1983 and is a graduate of Kinki University’s Department of Arts. He has worked on the stage, in radio, advertising, and on music videos and short films. Frequently writing and directing his own titles, his feature-film debut came with “Hana no Fukuro” (2008) and since then he has gone on to bigger projects, directing features like, “Neko ni Mikan” (2014) and “Yokotawaru Kanojo” (2014) and now, “The Name” (2017) which closes a major international festival.
As already reported, the festival opens on Friday March 9th at Hankyu Umeda Hall with the Japanese premiere of the Korean film “Anarchist from Colony”, directed by Lee Joon-ik (“The Throne” and “Dongju: The Portrait of a Poet”).
The full line-up of films has been announced and a full overview will follow soon.
The Osaka Asian Film Festival takes place from Friday, March 9th to Sunday, March 18th and “The Name” will be screened at the ABC Hall on March 18th.