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Billed as “Blue Fight” in Japan, “Blazing Fists” is inspired by Mma fighter Mikuru Asakura’s autobiography “Street Legend” but also retains intense anime/manga elements, as much as a subtle homage to Japanese cinema of the 90s and 00s, including Miike’s own works.

Blazing Fists is screening at International Film Festival Rotterdam

While in juvenile prison, Ryoma meets the strongest individual there, Ikuto and the two soon become best friends, even though their relationship owes a lot to the fact that the latter does not know the role the former played in his arrest. Inspired by a lecture by martial artist Mikuru Asakura, the two soon decide to join Breaking Down, a fighting tournament he organizes. Before they do that though, they have to train, pass an audition, and deal with Jun, the guy who has taken Ikuto’s place as the strongest in the area, and his gang.

The UK’s biggest festival of Japanese cinema, the Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme (JFTFP25), is back for its latest entertaining and thought-provoking instalment, presenting a packed programme on the theme of ‘Justice, Justification and Judgement in Japanese Cinema’.

In a world where injustice runs rampant, cinematic expressions of justice seem inexhaustible: time and time again, heroic protagonists fend off malicious antagonists or enact their revenge, with the constant injustices they face mirroring those of audiences. Japanese film is no exception to this, and the JFTFP25 promises to showcase how Japanese filmmakers use the language of cinema to explore the concepts of criminal, social and moral justice, along with the ways people respond to external judgement. Featuring everything from thought-provoking hidden gems, powerful true-life tales, women-led stories, anarchic comedies, and unearthed retrospective titles, UK audiences are invited to join the festival in questioning the very concepts of justice, justification and...

Naoto Kawashima is a film director, writer, and actor from Japan, born in 1990. He graduated from Nihon University College of Art, and is affiliated with the production company GunsRock. His debut, “Takasaki Graffiti”, premiered in Japan in 2018, and “Welcome Back” was nominated for the Competition 1-2 Award at the 40th Warsaw International Film Festival.

On the occasion of the world premiere of his second full-length film, “Welcome Back”, at the Warsaw International Film Festival, he talks about his career, the film industry in Japan and other topics.

Can you tell me why and how you became a filmmaker?

Everything began thanks to my mother. She loves movies, and we used to go together to a video rental shop. That’s how I started watching various films, and from that time it was kind of obvious to me to choose this career. Although at the start I was thinking of becoming a producer,...

Asian-produced teen and coming-of-age films will be the focus of a special section at this year’s Busan International Film Festival which is heading for its 29 edition in October.

With 10 titles, the section comprises a mix of notable recent productions, such as Malaysian body horror and self-discovery title “Tiger Stripes,” and a pair of world premieres.

In addition to “Tiger Stripes,” which won the Grand Prix Prize in Critics Week at Cannes in 2023, was selected as Malaysia’s Oscar contender only to be cut by local censors, the selection includes: “City of Wind,” winner of the Orizzonti Award for best actor at Venice last year; Okuyama Hiroshi’s “My Sunshine,” from this year’s Cannes Un Certain Regard section; Sora Neo’s “Happyend,” which will play at Venice next month’; Shuchi Talati’s “Girls Will Be Girls,” winner of the audience awards at Sundance in January; and “Fishbone,” which won...

Leading Japanese TV producer Morii Akira and South Korea’s J.Q. Lee are joining forces to create an action-driven series built around a protagonist with special powers.

The pair are both currently riding high, developing or producing additional seasons for their recent hit shows. Morii is currently working on a third season of Netflix original, dystopian series “Alice in Borderland.” Lee is working on Season 2 of Korean hit “All of Us Are Dead.”

The untitled new series is pitched as “an action-packed spectacular drama, featuring a protagonist with unique abilities never before seen in movies or Japanese comics [and] promising an unprecedented viewing experience,” the pair said.

A long-form story arc is being completed before being fleshed out into episodic storylines. Shooting, production schedules and cast details will be announced in the future.

“We cannot disclose specific details at this time, but I can say that this project will feature an ingenious and unheard-of storyline.

Japanese director Takeshi Kitano has provided the artwork for the poster of the 2024 edition of Cannes parallel section Directors’ Fortnight, running alongside the main festival from May 15 to 26.

Directors’ Fortnight, which unveiled the poster on Tuesday, said the cult director, actor, writer, comedian, and painter had given it free rein on which of his works to select and use.

“The director of almost 20 films let us into his studio and gave us the opportunity to choose one of his works,” said Directors’ Fortnight.

The section alluded to Kitano’s 1984 autobiographical story Takeshikun, hai depicting his daily life as a child and that of his family in the slums of Tokyo.

“‘I’d like to preserve my childlike sensibility indefinitely”: Kitano’s art has remained true to the promise on which his autobiographical story Takeshikun, hai! (1984) ends. Naive, playful and clownish, his work invites us to marvel, and not take ourselves too seriously,...

Mubi’s retrospective Takeshi Kitano: Destroy All Yakuza—featuring Violent Cop, Boiling Point, and Outrage Coda—is now showing in the United States, Canada, and select countries.Kubi.The presidential suite of the Grand Hotel Yerevan sits at the end of an amber-lit, carpeted corridor. The door comes fitted with its own CCTV camera, the concierge proudly gloats as an elevator slingshots us several floors above the ground, “so guests can feel safer.” Not that the current occupant has much to worry about. Guarding the suite on this exceptionally hot July afternoon is a small platoon of suit-clad Japanese men, looking equally stern and jet-lagged. The lucky few who get to pad in and out of the room do so in reverential silence, and even those outside speak in hushed voices, lest he should be disturbed. "He" is somewhere in the suite right now, and his name is Takeshi Kitano.

Kitano Takeshi, a contemporary icon of Japanese cinema, is to receive a lifetime achievement award next month at the Far East Film Festival in Udine, Italy.

“A legendary artist on Friday the 29th of April will receive the Golden Mulberry Award for lifetime achievement on the stage of Feff 24,” the festival announced Friday with barely concealed delight.

Kitano who has film credits as writer, director, producer and performer, as well as a whole TV comedy career, is known for the brutal sergeant he played alongside David Bowie and Sakamoto Ryuichi in Oshima Nagisa’s “Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence,” and for incursions into Hollywood in “Johnny Mnemonic” and “Ghost in the Shell.”

His Japanese oeuvre ranges from fine art to gangster genre thriller. He has credits in film noir (“Violent Cop”), romance (“A Scene at the Sea”), drama masterpieces and hard-boiled cult saga “Outrage.”

“For Far East Film Festival 24, a truly...

After winning the Golden Lion Award at the 1997 Venice Film Festival for “Hana-Bi”, the interest in Takeshi Kitano’s works as a director was at its peak, with many calling him one of the most important filmmakers in today’s Japan, even going so far as to compare him to Akira Kurosawa. While the international fame was certainly not unwelcome, Kitano could not help but notice the shift between the media attention he received in his home country versus the way he was now perceived in other countries, but also how he was associated with the yakuza-genre and the themes within it. In a way, his next feature “Kikujiro” can be viewed as a means to show a different side to his persona and his work, one which had already been present in “Kids Return” or “A Scene at the Sea”, and also an exploration into a genre he had not done before,...

Boxing has always been a very cinematic sport, with the its overall rules and the head-to-head mentality providing material for both captivating scripts and impressive visuals. Asian cinema has also been dealing with the concept, even if sporadically, but recently, there has been a surge of titles revolving around boxing, as we are still waiting for Brillante Mendoza’s “Gensan Punch”, which the protagonist, Shogen, having described the shooting as a once in a lifetime experience.

Among these titles, we picked 15 we think are among the most captivating to watch, as always with a focus on diversity in country of origin, filmmaker and style, although Japan has taken the lion’s share of entries in this list. The list is in chronological order.

1. Knockout

Violent, funny, dramatic and quirky are few of the contradictory words that can describe both “Knockout” and Hidekazu Akai, who plays the protagonist here, Eiji. As...

“No No Sleep” is another entry in Tsai Ming-liang’s “Walker”-series, in which he portrays a monk walking slowly and silent through various locations. This time the monk, who is always played by Lee Khang-Sheng (“Rebels of the Neon God” 1992), sets out for Tokyo and meets Masanobu Ando in a spa.

A collection of Tsai Ming Liang’s movies is streaming on Mubi

Let’s “Take a walk on the wild side”. The outline already gives out a promise. Whether you will take the patience to watch the film or not. There is not much movement in “No No Sleep”. Tsai Ming-liang rather manages to create a dynamic inside the singular frame. The static and suggestive compositions are undertaking the task of the usual storyteller. Although the plot is very shallow on the first sight, the director scatters certain, even sexual connotations into the relaxing and meditative mood.

Different...

In a style that reminded me much of Kitano’s “Kids Return,” in its disillusioned portrayal of the lives of Yakuza, Hiroshi Shoji presents a truly punk film that continues the currently lost legacy of the Japanese master.

Ken and Kazu are two lowlifes who use the failing car repair shop of the latter to deal meth, with the assistance of a simpleton named Teru, who also helps at the shop. Both of them have a good reason behind their actions, since Ken’s girlfriend is pregnant and he needs money to support her and the baby, and Kazu has to put his senile mother in an elderly house.

In this line of work, they actually work for Todo, a former classmate who is the yakuza in charge of the area, and whose enforcer is a brute named Tagami, who matches the archetype of the Yakuza henchman in all aspects.

“No No Sleep” is another entry in Tsai Ming-liang’s “Walker”-series, in which he portrays a monk walking slowly and silent through various locations. This time the monk, who is always played by Lee Khang-Sheng (“Rebels of the Neon God” 1992), sets out for Tokyo and meets Masanobu Ando in a spa.

“No No Sleep” is screening at Taiwan Film Festival UK

Let’s “Take a walk on the wild side”. The outline already gives out a promise. Whether you will take the patience to watch the film or not. There is not much movement in “No No Sleep”. Tsai Ming-liang rather manages to create a dynamic inside the singular frame. The static and suggestive compositions are undertaking the task of the usual storyteller. Although the plot is very shallow on the first sight, the director scatters certain, even sexual connotations into the relaxing and meditative mood.

Different from other...