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The Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF) today revealed the lineup for its 37th edition, which includes world premieres of features from China, Japan and Hong Kong among its competition strands.

The festival, which is set to run from October 28 to November 6, will include 120 films and three series across the 10 main sections. The selection was made from 2,023 entries, up from 1,942 last year.

Scroll down for full competition lists

The majority of the 15-strong Competition strand hails from Asia with three films from Japan and three from China as well as titles from Hong Kong, Taiwan and Kazakhstan.

The films from Japan...

The Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF) today revealed the lineup for its 37th edition, which includes world premieres of features from China, Japan and Hong Kong among its competition strands.

The festival, which is set to run from October 28 to November 6, will include 120 films and three series across the 10 main sections. The selection was made from 2,023 entries, up from 1,942 last year.

Scroll down for full competition lists

The majority of the 15-strong Competition strand hails from Asia with three films from Japan and three from China as well as titles from Hong Kong, Taiwan and Kazakhstan.

The films from Japan...

The Japan Academy Film Prize Association held the 46th edition of its awards ceremony on March 10, 2023. The nominees are selected by industry professionals from the pool of film releases between January 1 and December 31, 2022 which must have screened in Tokyo cinemas. Award categories are modelled after Hollywood's Academy Awards®.

Following its success at the recent Blue Ribbon Awards, and leading with 13 nominations in 12 categories, Kei Ishikawa's “A Man” walks away with 8 Japan Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress. The full list of winners is described below.

Picture of the Year

A Man

Shin Ultraman

Phases of the Moon

Anime Supremacy!

Wandering

Team from A Man Animation of the Year

Inu-Oh

Lonely Castle in the Mirror

Suzume

One Piece Film Red

The First Slam Dunk

Director of the Year

Kei Ishikawa – A Man

Takashi Koizumi – The Pass: Last...

In 1993, Akira Kurosawa’s final feature, “Madadayo,” was released. Following this, he would leave the director’s chair entirely after he suffered an injury to his spine, forcing him to spend the final years of his life in a wheelchair. After decades of filmmaking, his career as a director had come to an end. Yet, he wasn’t done artistically speaking, remaining active as a screenwriter. Unfortunately, things would worsen for him in the following years as his health gradually declined, further restricting him from being artistically creative. On September 6th, 1998, Akira Kurosawa died due to a stroke. The death of the renowned filmmaker was met with international mourning. However, his legacy would continue to live on thanks to overwhelming admiration from audiences for his filmography and numerous tributes. On top of this, many who worked alongside the beloved auteur sought to honor him. One such movie...

As we have mentioned many times before, the end of the Edo period in 1867, which essentially signaled the end of the samurai era in Japan, is one of the most interesting in Japanese history, and probably the one that has inspired the most films. Takashi Koizumi, whose credits include one as assistant director on Akira Kurosawa’s “Ran”, focuses on a series of events that took place in Nagaoka domain in Echigo, revolving around chief retainer Tsuginosuke Kawai, a senior military commander of the Nagaoka forces during the Boshin War of 1868–1869.

“The Pass: Last Days of the Samurai” is screening at Toronto Japanese Film Festival

The film begins with a rather imposing monologue by the Tokugawa shogun (presented impressively by Masahiro Higashide) and an analysis, through narration, of the situation in Japan at the time, which eventually led to the Boshin War. Literally in the midst of the military preparations...

As we have mentioned many times before, the end of the Edo period in 1867, which essentially signaled the end of the samurai era in Japan, is one of the most interesting in Japanese history, and probably the one that has inspired the most films. Takashi Koizumi, whose credits include one as assistant director on Akira Kurosawa’s “Ran”, focuses on a series of events that took place in Nagaoka domain in Echigo, revolving around chief retainer Tsuginosuke Kawai, a senior military commander of the Nagaoka forces during the Boshin War of 1868–1869.

“The Pass: Last Days of the Samurai” is screening at Japan Cuts

The film begins with a rather imposing monologue by the Tokugawa shogun (presented impressively by Masahiro Higashide) and an analysis, through narration, of the situation in Japan at the time, which eventually led to the Boshin War. Literally in the midst of the military preparations of the West and East forces,...

Exclusive: New York’s Japan Society has unveiled the full line-up for the 15th edition of Japan Cuts: Festival Of New Japanese Film, the largest celebration of Japanese cinema in North America.

Running August 20 – September, the hybrid online and in-theater event will welcome 27 features and 12 short films including 32 films available online throughout the U.S. and 14 screenings of eight films on the big screen in Japan Society’s auditorium.

The fest will kick off with the U.S. Premiere of Soushi Matsumoto’s sci-fi coming-of-age story It’s A Summer Film! The title will be presented online and in person.

Also in person will be the fest’s centrepiece presentation, Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Venice Film Festival Silver Lion-winning Wife of a Spy, a thriller tale of suspicion, betrayal and love set during WWII. The film’s star, Yu Aoi, will be the recipient of this year’s Cut Above Award from the Japan Society,...

Stars: Akira Terao, Martin Scorsese, Mieko Harada, Mitsuko Baisho | Written by Akira Kurosawa | Directed by Akira Kurosawa, Ishiro Honda

Made in 1990, in the twilight of his career, this is the kind of out-there movie that only an auteur of Akira Kurosawa’s status could have brought (or had financed) to fruition. He had help from some American cineaste buddies like Steven Spielberg (producing) and Martin Scorsese (lending his acting skills and a ginger wig); but the result is something steeped almost entirely in Japanese culture, its history and traditions.

Dreams is structured as a series of brief chapters, each based on one of Kurosawa’s own dreams. It’s an approach that at once seems chaotic: half-formed vignettes with no connective tissue. But at the end of its two-hour runtime, the linking themes coalesce in the mind. In short, this is a heartfelt cry about the threat of industrialisation upon rural Japanese life.

With a career spanning 50 years and over 30 feature films, legendary filmmaker Akira Kurosawa was an auteur all his very own. Best known for samurai epics like Seven Samurai, Kurosawa’s career featured ventures into noir (High and Low), crime drama (Rashomon) and even war epic (Dersu Uzala), but few of his films were as decidedly singular as one of his most grand and deeply personal works.

Entitled Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams (at least how it’s billed on the Criterion Collection website), this sumptuous epic is admittedly an oddity in the Kurosawa canon. Narratively, the film is broken down into eight varied vignettes, all of which drawn directly from actual dreams had by the film’s director. Rooted heavily in Japanese culture and folklore, Dreams takes us from small scale stories like that of a young boy getting caught in the middle of a forest-set fox wedding, to the apocalyptic...

If anybody’s dreams are interesting, Akira Kurosawa’s should be, and this late career fantasy is a consistently rewarding string of morality tales and visual essays that pop off the screen. Some of the imagery has input from the famed Ishiro Honda.

Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 842

1990 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 120 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date November 15, 2016 / 39.95

Starring Mieko Harada, Mitsunori Isaki, Toshihiko Nakano, Yoshitaka Zushi, Hisashi Igawa, Chosuke, Chishu Ryu, Martin Scorsese, Masayuki Yui.

Cinematography Takao Saito, Shoji Ueda

Film Editor Tome Minami

Original Music Sinichiro Ikebe

Creative Consultant ishiro Honda

Visual Effects Supervisors Ken Ralston, Mark Sullivan

Produced by Hisao Kurosawa, Mike Y. Inoue

Written and Directed by Akira Kurosawa

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

At the twilight of his career, after some episodes of career frustration and instability, Akira Kurosawa hit a high note with the epic costume dramas Kagemusha and Ran.

Mumbai, Oct 25 – The highlight of the Mumbai Film Festival this year has been the amazing retrospective of Japanese cinema. And giving thumbs up to the same was none other than Takashi Koizumi, Akira Kurosawa’s assistant director for 20 years before the master’s death.

‘This showcase should be done in Japan so that Japanese people can see it too,’ Koizumi said at a seminar on Japanese cinema here.

Writer, filmmaker and historian Arun Khopkar eulogizing the old Japanese masters, said: ‘These are not just great.