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A glimpse at upcoming UK DVD and Blu-ray release dates well into 2025: here’s what’s coming to disc and when.

Here, then, are a few of the upcoming dates for new movies on DVD and Blu-ray that may not yet have been officially announced. Note that all dates are for the UK.

Also: We’ve started adding affiliate links. If you click on those, we benefit, and can spend more money paying more people to write more things for this website. No pressure, just hugely obliged.

Obviously in the current climate everything is subject to change, of course…

Just released

First Time On UK Blu-ray: No Way Out (Film Stories Blu-ray #2)

First Time On UK Blu-ray: Bull Durham (Film Stories Blu-ray #3)

Scroll to the bottom of the this list for more releases over the last few weeks.

Last two weeks

17th March: Yojimbo & Sanjuro double set

17th March:...

Indian filmmaker Payal Kapadia’s poignant drama All We Imagine as Light went home with the best picture prize Sunday night at the 18th Asian Film Awards. It was the film’s final stop on a ten-month festival and awards season journey that began last May when it won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival.

“Thank you so much to my lead actors — three incredible artists and human beings. They are the ones who made this film what it is,” Kapadia said from the stage inside Hong Kong’s gleaming Xiqu Centre, where the ceremony was held. “I’m so happy that we could end our journey here in Hong Kong, a city that has meant a lot to me, watching the amazing films from this city over the years.”

Legendary Hong Kong filmmaker and martial arts star Sammo Hung served as president of the jury that selected the winners of the 2025 AFAs,...

With less than ten days to go, the 18th Asian Film Awards will take place on March 16 at the Xiqu Centre in West Kowloon. It has been officially announced that the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award will be presented to Yakusho Koji, recognising his four decades of profound contributions to cinema. The most nominated Best Actor in Japan Academy Film Prize history, he has won the award four times. His performance in Perfect Days earned him Best Actor Award at Cannes, solidifying his reputation as a world class actor. Now, with the Lifetime Achievement Award, he marks another defining milestone in his extraordinary career.

Reflecting on the honour, Yakusho Koji shared his appreciation, saying, “I feel incredibly honoured to receive this award. It is given as an encouragement to strive even harder.” When asked about the meaning of “lifetime” in this recognition, he reflected, “I feel it urges me to summon all my remaining strength and,...

Japanese actor Koji Yakusho, known for his critically acclaimed performances in films such as Perfect Days and Shall We Dance?, is to receive the lifetime achievement honour at the 18th Asian Film Awards.

The veteran performer will accept the award at the ceremony in Hong Kong on March 16. As part of a schedule of events associated with the awards, he will attend a screening of Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days on March 15. Yakusho’s role in the film, as a public toilet cleaner in Tokyo, won him the best actor award at Cannes in 2023 and the same honour at last year...

The star of Tampopo, Babel and The Eel reveals how it felt to share the screen with 17 stunning Tokyo lavatories in this joyously strange, Oscar-tipped film about a cleaner

Not all movie heroes wear capes, it is said, but only the rare, cherished few don rubber gloves and blue overalls. Perfect Days, the gorgeous new drama from the German director Wim Wenders, is about one such man of action: a lone wolf in crowded modern-day Japan. Middle-aged Hirayama is employed by Tokyo Toilet and drives a small van from one public convenience to the next. Like Travis Bickle and Dirty Harry, he’s on a mission to clean up the city. Unlike them, Hirayama means literally: he comes with brushes, squeegees and detergent.

Hirayama is played by Kōji Yakusho, a 68-year-old mainstay of Japanese cinema with approximately 100 screen credits to his name. He was the mysterious diner in the 1980s hit Tampopo,...

You may know Kōji Yakusho as the oyster-slurping mystery man from the noodle-Western extraordinaire Tampopo (1985). Perhaps you remember him as the depressed suburbanite who ballroom dances his blues away in the international feel-good hit Shall We Dance? (1996). He’s the reformed felon in the Cannes-winning character study The Eel (1997), a former muse to filmmaker Kiyoshi Kurosawa in the late Nineties and early aughts, the familiar face who graced Hollywood fare like Memoirs of a Geisha (2005) and Babel (2006), and — if you’ve followed his 40-plus years as a major figure in...

Neon has released the official trailer for Perfect Days, the latest film from acclaimed director Wim Wenders, featuring four interconnected short stories led by Kōji Yakusho. Perfect Days premiered at Cannes and received positive reviews, earning the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury and the Best Actor Award for Kōji Yakusho. It is Japan's entry for Best International Feature Film at the Oscars. Wenders, known for his visually stunning films, directs Perfect Days, which will be released in German theaters in December, followed by a release in Japan and the US in early 2024.

Neon has unveiled the official trailer for Perfect Days, the latest feature from auteur Wim Wenders. The drama uses vignettes led by Kōji Yakusho, who stars as a public toilet cleaner named Hirayama, to tell a simple and beautiful story about life. The trailer, set to Lou Reed's "Perfect Day," follows Hirayama through what starts as a typical day.

Across a 45-year career in the movies, Koji Yakusho has worked with every major Japanese director of his generation and inhabited over 80 characters, spanning salarymen, samurai, yakuza gangsters, taxi drivers, journalists, cops, killers, heroes, dancers, seducers and everymen of all kinds. But in German filmmaker Wim Wender’s latest feature, the Tokyo-set drama Perfect Days, the 68-year-old actor may have found the most natural vehicle yet for his screen persona’s unique blend of elegance and inward dignity. And he inhabits a humble toilet cleaner.

A deceptively simple character study of slowly accumulating emotional heft, Perfect Days features Yakusho in nearly every frame of its 123-minute runtime. He plays Hirayama, a man who would appear to have dropped out of life if he didn’t take such palpable pleasure in his modest daily routines. Hirayama works as the devoted cleaner of architecturally distinctive public restrooms in Tokyo’s city parks...

Japanese actor Koji Yakusho, winner of Cannes’ best actor prize this year for his universally acclaimed performance in Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days, has been selected 2023 Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival’s filmmaker in focus.

Yakusho will attend the Taiwanese festival in person and present a selection of seven of his films during the event’s 17-day duration. The titles shown will include Perfect Days and the erotic classic Lost Paradise (1997), as well as five titles selected by Yakusho himself, including Kamikaze Taxi (1995), Shall We Dance (1996), Cure (1997), Eureka (2000) and The Woodsman and the Rain (2011).

“With these seven films, cinephiles will be able to witness the charm and versatile acting of a legendary actor,” Taipei’s organizers said in a statement.

Across his four-decade career, Yakusho has been nominated for the Japan Academy of Film Prize 23 times, including seven consecutive nominations in the best leading actor category, which he has won three times,...

Wim Wenders’ “Perfect Days,” which won the best actor award for Koji Yakusho at the Cannes Film Festival, has sold out worldwide. The Match Factory is handling international sales. (Read our interview with Wim Wenders here.)

As previously announced, North American rights went to Neon and France went to Haut et Court.

Further sales included U.K./Ireland/Latin America/Turkey (Mubi), Australia/New Zealand (Madman), Benelux (Paradiso), China (DDDream), Italy (Lucky Red), Spain (A Contracorriente), Switzerland (Dcm), Baltics (A-One Baltics), Bulgaria (Art Fest), Cis (A-One), Czech Republic and Slovakia (Aerofilms), Former Yugoslavia (McF), Greece (Feelgood Entertainment), Hong Kong (Edko Films), Hungary (Cirko), Israel (Lev Cinemas), Poland (Gutek), Portugal (Alambique), Romania (Bad Unicorn), Scandinavia (Future Film) and Taiwan (Applause).

The film is a deeply moving and poetic reflection on finding beauty in the everyday world around us. It follows Hirayama, who seems utterly content with his simple life as a cleaner of toilets in Tokyo.

At the start of the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, Swedish director Ruben Östlund told a roomful of journalists that he would rather win his third Palme d’Or than an Oscar. For this year, at least, the previous Cannes winner for “Triangle of Sadness” and “The Square” will have to settle for handing the Palme d’Or to someone else.

As the president of this year’s jury for the Official Competition of the 76th festival, Ostlund is leading a team of nine writers, directors, and actors (as well as two writer-director-actors): Fellow Palme d’Or winner Julia Ducournau (“Titane”), Brie Larson, Zambian filmmaker Rungano Nyoni, Moroccan filmmaker Maryam Touzani, Paul Dano, French actor Denis Ménochet, Afghan director Atiq Rahimi, and Argentinian director Damián Szifron. The group will spend the festival watching two to three competition films per day, and Ostlund has said that they will gather to deliberate every...

Bittersweet tale of an apparently contented toilet cleaner has an ambient urban charm, but feels a little too understated

Wim Wenders’s new film, co-scripted by him with writer-director Takuma Takasaki, is a bittersweet quirky-Zen character study set in Tokyo which only comes fully to life in the final extended shot of the hero’s face, drifting back and forth between happiness and sadness. There are some lovely magic-hour scenes from cinematographer Franz Lustig, shooting in the boxy “Academy” frame.

Hirayama, played by Koji Yakusho (from Shohei Imamura’s The Eel) is a middle-aged man employed as a toilet cleaner, who drives around serenely from job to job in his van, listening to classic rock and pop on old-school audio cassettes: Patti Smith, the Kinks and of course, given the title, Lou Reed. At each location, he changes into a jumpsuit and with his brushes and mop matter-of-factly gets on with the job in hand.

Variety has been given a sneak peek of the trailer (below) for Wim Wenders’ “Perfect Days,” which world premieres in Competition at the Cannes Film Festival.

The film is a deeply moving and poetic reflection on finding beauty in the everyday world around us. It follows Hirayama, who seems utterly content with his simple life as a cleaner of toilets in Tokyo. Outside of his very structured everyday routine he enjoys his passion for music and for books. And he loves trees and takes photos of them. A series of unexpected encounters gradually reveal more of his past.

Koji Yakusho leads the cast. In 2005, he co-starred in “Memoirs of a Geisha,” which was nominated for six Academy Awards. In the following year, he co-starred in “Babel,” a film that was honored by the Cannes Film Festival and earned Golden Globes and Academy Awards.

Along with his international success, Yakusho has...

Cannes Film Festival head honcho Thierry Frémaux often likes to speak of the “Cannes family,” meaning the extended stable of international auteurs whom the festival helped discover, nurtured and has made regulars on the famed red-carpet steps of the Palais des Festivals. Today’s standard-bearer for Japan’s great tradition of humanist filmmaking in Cannes is undoubtedly Hirokazu Kore-eda, whose features have been included in the festival’s official selection seven times, a record for his home country. Incidentally, the leitmotif of Kore-eda’s work is also family — families broken, families in turmoil and families found. His most celebrated films at Cannes have all centered on the theme, albeit in various and inventive ways.

Like Father, Like Son, winner of the 2013 Cannes jury prize, told the story of two boys mistakenly switched at birth, the discovery of which — years later — confronts the parents with the agonizing decision of whether to...

Neon earned bragging rights tonight with the third consecutive Palme d’Or Cannes winner in a row, that being Ruben Östlund’s satirical comedy Triangle of Sadness, which was a huge crowd pleaser during the fest.

The pic follows Neon’s previous Palme d’Or winner, last year’s Titane and, of course, 2019’s Parasite which went on to win four Oscars including Best Picture.

Triangle of Sadness is a knock on the 1 and follows a fashion model and her model casting agent partner, played by Charlbi Dean and Harris Dickinson. The duo wind up on luxury yacht where they’re the poorest of the poor. Woody Harrelson plays a Marxist captain who gets drunk with a Russian oligarch, reads from the Communist manifesto and sends his yacht into rough waters until the passengers crap and vomit. Hijinks ensue with a portion marooned to a deserted island.

The pic clocks in at 2 1/2 hours.

Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, the Belgian brothers who have directed a series of films notable for quiet naturalism, are a prime example of how at the Cannes Film Festival, familiarity breeds not contempt but contentment.

Year after year, Cannes puts the Dardennes’ films in the Main Competition; they’ve made nine features since “Rosetta” in 1999, and every one of them has vied for Cannes’ top honor, the Palme d’Or, with “Rosetta” and 2005’s “L’Enfant” winning and four others taking additional awards. The Dardennes now have a chance to make significant Cannes history by becoming the first directors to ever win the Palme for a third time.

If they win for “Tori and Lokita,” which premiered in Cannes on Tuesday, they’ll also set a new record for the longest time elapsed between Cannes wins, with the 17-year gap since “L’Enfant” breaking the record of 14 years between Shohei Imamura’s...

With a career spanning over 6 decades and more than 100 credits to his name, Koji Yakusho is one of the most renowned Japanese actors, with his success being rather evident in both his home country and internationally, particularly after his roles in “Memoirs of a Geisha” and “Babel”. A true chameleon of acting, Yakusho has played all kinds of roles in his career, always being convincing whether in horror, comedies, social dramas or samurai movies, whether in blockbusters or independent productions, whether on TV or even voice acting in anime. As a tribute to this remarkable actor, we present 20 of his best roles throughout his career, in chronological order.

1. Dark Society in the East

How many actors do you think can walk up to a woman and say “I want to fondle your breasts” and be accepted, in the same film that begins with them literally scraping crap off freshly excreted cocaine bags?...

“Prison is the only place that won’t kick you out no matter how badly you behave,” remarks the ex-con protagonist, who gets no second chances in Japanese society. Directed with piercing insight, emotional depth and true compassion by Miwa Nishikawa, “Under the Open Skies” tells the heartbreaking tale of a pariah whose soul is crushed by systemic discrimination and a world of hypocritical conformity. while likely collecting awards at home and abroad.

Ever since her sophomore feature “Sway” premiered at Cannes’ Director’s Fortnight in 2006, Nishikawa has been a name to watch for riveting, wickedly cynical works. She also excels in drawing morally ambiguous characters: liars and swindlers hiding secrets behind their social standing. Though her technique is no less rigorous, her sixth film treads a new path by rooting for a career criminal from the lower depths who suffers for his honest values. This puts the film in...

Jasper Sharp is a writer, curator and filmmaker specialising in Japanese cinema, and co-founder of the Japanese film website Midnighteye.com. His book publications include The Midnight Eye Guide to New Japanese Film (2003), joint-written with Tom Mes, Behind the Pink Curtain (2008) and The Historical Dictionary of Japanese Film (2011). He is the co-director of The Creeping Garden (2014), alongside Tim Grabham, a documentary about plasmodial slime moulds. He has programmed a number of high profile seasons and retrospectives with organisations including the British Film Institute, Deutches Filmmuseum, Austin Fantastic Fest, the Cinematheque Quebecois and Thessaloniki International Film Festival.

We spoke with Jasper no longer after his talk – in recent, more social times – on Ero Guro for the Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies in London, and we discussed about how he got sucked into the wild side of Japanese Cinema, the years of Midnight Eye, his latest passions and more.

Hi Jasper. In...

Everyone has seen Kikuhrio and Pk, but there’s nothing wrong with adding a few other titles to your rotation. Did you know that watching movies with your loved ones brings two times greater positive effects that watching them alone? You can always use this site to find someone to spend some time with.

With that said, let’s get right into it!

5. A Werewolf Boy (2012)

As one of the most popular Korean romantic movies, it should be no surprise it’s on this list. In this movie, Song Joon Ki plays the role of Chul Soo, the “werewolf” boy and Park Bo Young portray the lovely teen, Soon Yi.

When Soon Yi’s family moves to the countryside because of her illness, she meets Chul Soon and helps him acclimate to civilized life. As you guessed, they fall in love!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGyLPT6pQs8

4. Two...

Across a four-decade career, Koji Yakusho, 63, has played samurai warlords, salarymen, gangsters, murderers and policemen, winning acclaim and awards in Japan and across the globe. He first came to the attention of international audiences in 1996 with Shall We Dance? — Richard Gere reprised his role in a 2004 U.S. remake — which he followed by starring in the 1997 Palme d'Or winner The Eel, directed by Shohei Imamura. In the mid-2000s he appeared in two Hollywood productions: Rob Marshall's Memoirs of a Geisha and Babel, directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu.

Yakusho, who has been chosen ...

Across a four-decade career, Koji Yakusho, 63, has played samurai warlords, salarymen, gangsters, murderers and policemen, winning acclaim and awards in Japan and across the globe. He first came to the attention of international audiences in 1996 with Shall We Dance? — Richard Gere reprised his role in a 2004 U.S. remake — which he followed by starring in the 1997 Palme d'Or winner The Eel, directed by Shohei Imamura. In the mid-2000s he appeared in two Hollywood productions: Rob Marshall's Memoirs of a Geisha and Babel, directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu.

Yakusho, who has been chosen ...

Total of 16 titles set for this year’s Competition line-up.

Tokyo International Film Festival has announced the 16 titles that will compete in its International Competition, including the world premieres of His Master’s Voice, from Hungary’s Gyorgy Palfi, Fruit Chan’s Three Husbands, Veit Helmer’s The Bra and Liu Hao’s The Poet.

Tiff’s competition line-up will also include the world premieres of two Japanese titles – Junji Sakamoto’s Another World and Rikiya Imaizumi’s Just Only Love (see full line-up below).

Leading Philippines filmmaker Brillante Ma Mendoza is heading this year’s Competition jury, which also comprises Us producer Bryan Burk,...

Japapese director Hirokazu Kore-eda’s much anticipated “Manbiki Kazoku” (“Shoplifters”) has been awarded the top prize – the Palm d’Or – at the closing of the 71st edition of the prestigious Cannes film festival. An important night for Japanese Cinema whose most recent winner of the Palme D’Or was director Shohei Imamura for “The Eel”, back in 1997.

Mr. Koreeda is a regular of the French glamorous festival, “Shoplifters” being his fifth movie to be nominated for an award at Cannes and this year his movie was chosen within a pool of 21 other competitors. In the acceptance speech at the Closing Ceremony the director dedicated the Award to the to the whole production team and crew involved in the movie as well as to young directors.

Written, directed and edited by Kore-eda and inspired by everyday accounts of petty crimes, “Shoplifters” focuses on an alternative family of small-time crooks in Tokyo,...

Japanese actor Yakusho’s work includes 1997 Palme d’Or winner The Eel.

This year’s Tokyo Inte­­­rnational Film Festival will be hosting retrospectives of the work of Japanese actor Koji Yakusho and animation director Masaaki Yuasa.

Tiff’s Japan Now section will screen a selection of Yakusho’s work, which spans Cannes Palme d’Or winner The Eel (1997); Eureka (2001), which received the prize of the Cannes Ecumenical Jury; and international productions such as Memoirs Of A Geisha (2005) and Babel (2007). He also recently starred in Hirokazu Kore-eda’s The Third Murder (2017). “Koji Yakusho is Japan’s leading international actor, demonstrating...

Tokyo International Film Festival (Tiff) will showcase the work of actor Koji Yakusho and anime director Masaaki Yuasa at this year's event.

Yakusho found fame in Japan starring as samurai lord Oda Nobunaga in public broadcaster Nhk's year-long historical "Taiga" drama Tokugawa Ieyasu in 1983, before appearing in Juzo Itami's Tampopo in 1986.

During the 1990s he garnered international acclaim with films including Masayuki Suo's Shall We Dance?, Cannes' Palme d'Or winner The Eel by Shohei Imamura and Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Cure. He went on to collaborate six more times with Kurosawa and has been cast by most of...

The Tokyo International Film Festival will dedicate a major sidebar section this year to the work of legendary actor Koji Yakusho. Another section will be dedicated to animation director Masaaki Yuasa.

“Over a 40-year career, Yakusho has won best actor awards at a variety of international film festivals, such as with “Cure” (1997) at the Tokyo festival, “Warm Water Under the Red Bridge” at the Chicago International Film Festival, “Walking My Life” at Film Madrid, “The Woodsman and the Rain” at the Dubai International Film Festival and “The World of Kanako” at the Sitges Festival. He has also starred in a remarkable number of other award-winning films: Cannes Palme d’Or-winning “The Eel,” “Eureka” and Alejandro Inarritu’s “Babel.”

Yuasa has been involved with popular franchises including “Doraemon,” “Chibi Maruko-chan” and “Crayon Shinchan.” More recently he has scored as a feature director. His “Lu Over the Wall” won the Cristal Award...

Tokyo International Film Festival (Tiff) will showcase the work of actor Koji Yakusho and anime director Masaaki Yuasa at this year's event.

Yakusho found fame in Japan starring as samurai lord Oda Nobunaga in public broadcaster Nhk's yearlong historical "Taiga" drama <em>Tokugawa Ieyasu </em>in 1983, before appearing in Juzo Itami's <em>Tampopo</em> in 1986.

During the 1990s he garnered international acclaim with films including Masayuki Suo's<em> Shall We Dance?</em>, Cannes' Palme d'Or winner <em>The Eel </em>by Shohei Imamura and <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/foreboding-director-kiyoshi-kurosawa-being-a-horror-master-who-doesn-t-like-gore-1085863" target="_blank">Kiyoshi Kurosawa'</a>s <em>Cure</em>. He went on to collaborate six more times with Kurosawa and has been cast by most ...

Isabelle Adjani, the Oscar-nominated star of François Truffaut’s “The Story of Adele H.” and Bruno Nuytten’s “Camille Claudel,” presided over the Cannes jury in 1997, the year of the festival’s 50th anniversary.

Heading the panel is “a very intense experience and at times a difficult mission when it comes to judging the work of other artists, and defending your emotions and ideas against those of other jury members,” says Adjani, who is a fan of incoming president Cate Blanchett. Adjani reportedly clashed with directors Mike Leigh and Nanni Moretti in choosing the winner of the 1997 Palme d’Or, with the jury eventually deciding to give the award to two films, Shohei Imamura’s “The Eel” and Abbas Kiarostami’s “Taste of Cherry.”

“The film world continues to be dominated by men,” says Adjani, one of the first and few French stars to have publicly voiced her support for the #MeToo movement.

Abbas Kiarostami (June 22, 1940 - July 4, 2016) Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Composer Grégoire Hetzel (Catherine Corsini's Summertime, Anne Fontaine's The Innocents, Arnaud Desplechin's My Golden Days), filmmaker Roberto Andò (The Confessions, Long Live Freedom), and cinematographer Ed Lachman (Todd Solondz' Wiener-Dog, Todd Haynes' Carol and Far From Heaven) salute Abbas Kiarostami, who passed away in Paris on Monday, July 4, 2016.

Abbas Kiarostami's final film, Like Someone In Love, was screened at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, where in 1997 he shared Palme d'Or honours for Taste of Cherry with Shohei Imamura's The Eel.

Grégoire Hetzel: "Kiarostami forced entry into my childhood memories by retrospective invasion." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Grégoire Hetzel, Roberto Andò and Ed Lachman remember Abbas Kiarostami:

"Kiarostami is one of my most beloved filmmakers. On hearing the news of his loss, I was instantly reminded that his films like The Traveler, Homework, Where is the Friend's Home?...

Welcome back to Cannes Check, In Contention's annual preview of the films in Competition at this year's Cannes Film Festival, which kicks off on May 14. Taking on different selections every day, we'll be examining what they're about, who's involved and what their chances are of snagging an award from Jane Campion's jury. Next up, the first of two female directors in the lineup: Naomi Kawase's "Still the Water." The director: Naomi Kawase (Japanese, 44 years old). It's possible for certain filmmakers to become prominent, celebrated figures within the festival circuit without making much of a dent in the real world, even in the art-house sphere. Naomi Kawase is a good example. Favored by selectors and juries alike, even her most generously awarded films have secured minimal international distribution -- making her at once a familiar and unfamiliar presence in the lineup. Born and raised in Japan's rural Nara district,...

The major highlight of this year's Japan Cuts festival for Japanese film fans, as well as fans of great acting in general, is the New York appearance of Koji Yakusho, one of Japan's most acclaimed and accomplished actors, who continues to work at the top of his form. The Eel, Cure (screening July 21), Eureka, Warm Water Under a Red Bridge, and Doppelganger are but a few of the more memorable films he has starred in. Japan Cuts this year will feature a career mini-retrospective devoted to Yakusho, which will include Shall We Dance?, Masayuki Suo's 1996 film that was many Westerners' introduction to Yakusho, as well as Takashi Miike's remake of 13 Assassins (which Yakusho will introduce on July 21), and his 2009 directorial...

Screened at the 2012 Terracotta Far East Film Festival. “The Woodsman and the Rain” is a warm hearted comedy with an appealingly offbeat premise, following the relationship between a young director and a gruff lumberjack during the shooting of a zombie film in picturesque rural Japan. The film was directed by Shuichi Okita, last responsible for the popular cooking comedy “The Chef of South Polar”, and interestingly enough features a script by Fumiyo Moriya, who recently wrote the amazing Kappa sex pinku outing “Underwater Love”. Starring acclaimed veteran actor Koji Yakusho (“The Eel”, “13 Assassins”) and former television heartthrob Shun Oguri (“Boys over Flowers”) in the two lead roles, the film has been enjoying a successful run, winning the Special Jury Prize at the Tokyo International Film Festival. The film begins with Koji Yakusho as Katsu, a 60 year-old lumberjack living in the peaceful mountain village of Yamamura, who is interrupted one day...

[Our thanks go out to Chris MaGee and Marc Saint-Cyr at the Toronto J-Film Pow-Wow for sharing their coverage of the 2010 Nippon Connection Film Festival.]

On my first day of film viewing at the 10th Nippon Connection film festival, I had the great pleasure of seeing what might turn out to be one of it's strongest entries: "Oh, My Buddha!," the second film directed by Tomorowo Taguchi, who is best known for his acting work in films as diverse as "Dead or Alive: Hanzaisha," "Gohatto," "The Eel" and "Tetsuo: the Iron Man," in which he plays the title character. Though I haven't yet seen his 2003 directorial debut "Iden & Tity," it is clear from "Oh, My Buddha!" alone that he has developed a very confident and mature understanding of filmmaking, maintaining a sharp control over his style and drawing you into a well-told and compulsively watchable story.

The film follows young Jun, a first-year student at an all-boys Buddhist high school in Kyoto. The year is 1974, and Jun is an aspiring musician who lovingly worships...

Abbas Kiarostami began making documentaries about children and education and progressed through shorts to art films that won awards around the world. Despite constant trouble with Iran's censors, he says he couldn't work anywhere else. A retrospective of his stills photography and movies opens in London this month. Interview by Stuart Jeffries

On May 18 1997, Abbas Kiarostami made what some still regard as a faux pas. He kissed Catherine Deneuve on the cheek. At the time, he was on the stage of the Grand Thétre Lumière at Cannes, receiving the Palme d'Or from the French star for Taste of Cherry (an award shared, highly unusually, with Shohei Imamura for the Japanese director's film The Eel). "Many critics said that the film marked the highest point in Kiarostami's film career," says cinema historian and his biographer, Alberto Elena, "and with that glorious reputation the film began to be shown all over the world.