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Agency for Cultural Affairs, Government of Japan (Aca) announces the sixth Aca Cinema Project series – New Films from Japan – organized as part of its Japan Film Overseas Expansion Enhancement Project in collaboration with the IFC Center and with Visual Industry Promotion Organization (Vipo) entrusted with the operation of the project. This edition of the program will present four films that have made an impact, received critical acclaim, and won awards at film festivals around the world over the course of the past year.

Screening at the IFC Center on February 10-16, the lineup will include Kei Ishikawa’s A Man, Shô Miyake’s Small, Slow but Steady, Nao Kubota’s Thousand and One Nights, Yuji Nakae’s The Zen Diary, and Juichiro Yamasaki’s Yamabuki.

New Films from Japan series is the latest presentation of the Aca Cinema Project, representing the buzzworthy films of contemporary Japanese screen entertainment and highlighting...

There are two very evident characteristics when one deals with Japanese cinema. The first one is the intelligence in the way the story is composed and presented, which frequently extends to the style of humor. The second is that too many local filmmakers do not know where and when to end their films. Juichiro Yamasaki’s “Yamabuki” definitely features both.

“Yamabuki” is screening at InlanDimensions

The script revolves around a series of characters, whose stories end up being interconnected. Chang-su is a former Olympic jockey for the South Korean national team, whose father’s bankruptcy and the subsequent loans he left forced him to move to Japan to get work that would allow to pay back. There, however, he has found some measure of happiness, working in a quarry where he is about to receive a promotion, and caring for Minami and her infant daughter, Uzuki. That is until local...

Two more sidebars at this year’s Cannes Film Festival have unveiled their lineup. First up, Critics Week (aka La Semaine de la Critique), which brings together first and second features, has announced its 2022 slate, which includes a special screening of Jesse Eisenberg’s When You Finish Saving the World, which we reviewed at Sundance. While the festival is primarily geared towards discoveries, it also includes a new short by Yann Gonzalez.

Acid (Association for the Distribution of Independent Cinema) also unveiled its nine features, which notably includes a new film by Damien Manivel, who recently directed the acclaimed Isadora’s Children. Check out both lineups below.

Critics Week (hat tip to Screen Daily)

Special Screenings

When You Finish Saving The World (US) (Opening film)

Dir. Jesse Eisenberg

Sons Of Ramses (Fr)

Dir. Clément Cogitore

Everybody Loves Jeanne (Fr)

Dir. Céline Devaux

Next Sohee (S Kor) (Closing film)

Dir. July Jung...

Parallel section focuses on independent features yet to secure French distribution and first films.

France’s Association for the Diffusion of Independent Cinema (Acid) has unveiled the nine features it will showcase in its parallel Cannes section, running May 18 to 26.

Seven titles will world premiere including French director Damien Manivel’s fourth feature Magdala. Inspired by the final days of the biblical figure of Mary Magdalene, it stars his long-time muse Jamaica-born, France-based choreographer Elsa Wolliaston.

Manivel’s last film, Takara, The Night I Swam, co-directed with Kohei Igarashi, premiered in Venice Horizons in 2017.

Further French selections include Martin Jauvat’s Grand Paris,...

Juichiro Yamasaki’s third feature film “Yamabuki” competed in the Tiger competition of Rotterdam International Film Festival, alongside thirteen other international titles. In his multi-layered drama, the destinies of two people intersect. We are firstly introduced to Chang-su, a former Olympic jockey for the South Korea national team who had to quit his dreams of gold medal to help his family financially after his father’s bankruptcy. That road has led him to Maniwa, a small rural town in Japan where he lives with his Japanese partner and her daughter, trying to make the ends meet by working in the local quarry. A young woman, the titular Yamabuki is another person whose path we follow during the film’s 97 minutes runtime. Her connection to the movie’s title could be considered strange, if it weren’t more to her name. In our interview during the festival, Yamasaki was very specific...

On the steep, rocky hills near rural town Minawa in western Japan, a unique species of flower called yamabuki, or more broadly, the Japanese rose, grows. The yellow-blooming shrub likes to grow in secluded places and is very lonely, especially since it is the only representative of Kerria's genus, almost as lonely as the heroes of the latest film by Juichiro Yamasaki, entitled in honour of these exceptional flowers.

Yamabuki is a story about lost dreams, lost loved ones, longing for home and searching for one's place in the world. The stories of several heroes seemingly accidentally intertwine with each other, linking them with a complicated network of unconscious dependencies. Here one will meet a South Korean Chang-su ( (Kang Yoon-soo), a former equestrian athlete, who lost the opportunity to fulfill his sports dream, now working at Minawa's quarry, living with a woman who ran away with her infant daughter from.

Answering the SunInternational Film Festival Rotterdam have announced the full lineup for their "scaled-down" 51st edition, which will take place online between January 26 — February 6. As part of a full, nationwide lockdown, cinemas will remain closed in the Netherlands until at least 14 January. Tiger COMPETITIONAchrome (Maria Ignatenko)The Cloud Messenger (Rahat Mahajan)The Child (Marguerite de Hillerin/Félix Dutilloy-Liégeois)Eami (Paz Encina)Excess Will Save Us (Morgane Dziurla-Petit)Kafka for Kids (Roee Rosen)Malintzin 17 (Mara Polgovsky/Eugenio Polgovsky)Met mes (Sam de Jong)The Plains (David Easteal)Proyecto Fantasma (Roberto Doveris)Le rêve et la radio (Renaud Després-Larose/Ana Tapia Rousiouk)Silver Bird and Rainbow Fish (Lei Lei)To Love Again (Gao Linyang)Yamabuki (Juichiro Yamasaki)Big Screen COMPETITIONAssault (Adilkhan Yerzhanov)Broadway (Christos Massalas)Third Grade (Jacques Doillon)Daryn’s Gym (Brett Michael Innes)Drifting Petals (Clara Law)The Harbour (Rajeev Ravi)The Island (Anca Damian)Kung Fu Zohra (Mabrouk El Mechri...

Love & PeaceIn celebration of the 10th anniversary of the festival Japan Cuts, the biggest North American festival of Japanese film, Mubi has selected three films that have been part of the lineup of recent editions: 0.5mm (Momoko Andô) and The Horses of Fukushima (Yoju Matsubayashi) from the 2014 festival and Sanchu Uprising: Voices at Dawn (Juichiro Yamasaki), which was last year’s closing film.The festival runs from the 14th to the 24th of July at the Japan Society in New York. Coincidently, among the films that’ll play in this milestone event, three are related to the magnificent, strange and eclectic director Sion Sono, but they’re also related to the three films that Mubi will showcase in the United States during and after the festival.Love & Peace might go down, in the near future, as Sion Sono’s masterpiece, the film that most represents the personal style as well...

Japan Cuts 2015 opens in New York today and runs through July 19. We've got the trailer and we're collecting review of the new restorations of Eiichi Yamamoto's Belladonna of Sadness (1973) and Nagisa Oshima’s Cruel Story of Youth (1961); Shingo Wakagi's Asleep and Masaharu Take's 100 Yen Love, both starring Sakura Ando; Juichiro Yamasaki's Sanchu Uprising: Voices at Dawn; Takahisa Zeze's Strayer's Chronicle; Yuya Ishii's The Vancouver Asahi; two collections of experimental films—and more. » - David Hudson...

Japan Cuts 2015 opens in New York today and runs through July 19. We've got the trailer and we're collecting review of the new restorations of Eiichi Yamamoto's Belladonna of Sadness (1973) and Nagisa Oshima’s Cruel Story of Youth (1961); Shingo Wakagi's Asleep and Masaharu Take's 100 Yen Love, both starring Sakura Ando; Juichiro Yamasaki's Sanchu Uprising: Voices at Dawn; Takahisa Zeze's Strayer's Chronicle; Yuya Ishii's The Vancouver Asahi; two collections of experimental films—and more. » - David Hudson...

For fans of Japanese Cinema, check out this New York based festival, Japan Cuts, now in its ninth year. Running July 9-19, the festival is sponsored by the Japan Society and boasts the largest selection of new Japanese films at a North American festival.

Japan Cuts opens with Hibi Rock: Puke Afro and the Pop Star, a comedy from director Yu Irie about rival punk and pop music stars and based on a popular manga. The centerpiece films are Asleep & 100 Yen Love, two films both starring Sakura Ando, who will be present for a Q&A at both screenings. Finally, the closing night film is Sanchu Uprising: Voices at Dawn, a black and white samurai story directed by Juichiro Yamasaki.

For full details about the festival’s film lineup and schedule and how to buy tickets, visit JapanSociety.org.

The post Discover New Japanese Cinema in ‘Japan Cuts’ festival appeared first on Sound On Sight.

Founded in 1999 by students at the University of Frankfurt, Germany, the Nippon Connection film festival has become the biggest platform for current Japanese cinema outside of Japan. The festival prides itself on the proportion of premieres: in 2012, of 142 shorts and features screened, 42 were world premieres and 14 international premieres. Most of the remaining films were either European or German premieres. In short, if you want to see the latest Japanese films without actually going to Japan, Frankfurt is the place to be.

It’s worth having a look at Nippon Connection’s web site, not just for information about the festival (in both German and English), but also to appreciate its award-winning design, which could serve as an example to many larger film festivals. Last year’s site was framed by imbricated petals in varying shades of pink, evoking a digital carpet of cherry blossoms, a magical anime fish, or even...