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Gabriel Mascaro’s “The Blue Trail,” playing in competition in Berlin, marks another great milestone for Brazilian cinema in a year where the country got its first best picture Oscar nomination with Walter Salles’ “I’m Still Here.” Mascaro follows in the footsteps of Salles playing in competition in Venice and Karim Aïnouz playing in competition at Cannes with “Motel Destino,” three consecutive Brazilian films playing in the most prestigious strands of the three most important European film festivals.

“Each one of these films is so different from each other but has great strengths,” Mascaro tells Variety ahead of his Berlinale bow. “I feel very proud to be a part of it.”

“The Blue Trail” takes place in a near future Brazil where the government relocates the elderly to senior housing colonies so the younger generations can fully focus on productivity and growth. Tereza (Denise Weinberg), nearing 80, refuses to accept her fate,...

CinemAsia Film Festival 2025 presents its full program for the 17th edition, running March 6-11 in Amsterdam. Featuring 38 handpicked films – of which 27 feature films and 11 shorts, including 1 world and 4 European premieres – the lineup spans blockbusters, art-house gems, and independent productions.

Hosted at Eye Filmmuseum, Studio/K, Rialto De Pijp, and Rialto Vu, CinemAsia invites audiences on a cinematic journey through Asia’s rich storytelling, stunning visuals, and diverse cultural perspectives.

Grand Opening & Closing Films

Opening Film – Happyend by Neo Sora (Dutch premiere) – Director present at the festival.

The festival opens with the highly anticipated Happyend by Japanese-American filmmaker Neo Sora. Set in a dystopian near-future Tokyo overshadowed by an impending catastrophic earthquake, this visually stunning film explores identity and friendship in a world dominated by control and uncertainty.

Closing Film – Fly Me To The Moon (Hong Kong 2023) by Sasha Chuk (Dutch premiere) – Director present.

CinemAsia 2025 closes with Fly Me to the Moon,...

With a filmography both so vast as to be barely comprehensible and often reduced to the cult favorite House, Nobuhiko Obayashi remains a perpetual object for further study. Even my own familiarity with his corpus doesn’t leave room for everything in the tightly curated series Japan Society will host from February 7 to 14: “Obayashi ’80s: The Onomichi Trilogy & Kadokawa Years,” comprising six films and imported 35mm and 16mm prints. Ahead of this early 2025 repertory highlight, we’re pleased to debut a trailer edited by programmer Alexander Fee.

Here’s Japan Society’s official description: “The teenage symphonies of Nobuhiko Obayashi (1938-2020) are wound in a melancholy nostalgia for a period indelibly lost to time—that inexpressible gap between adolescence and adulthood. Braiding visually expressive fantasias with striking formal experimentation and pop-art boldness, Obayashi’s idiosyncratic cinematic language produced some of Japan’s most beloved seishun eiga in the 1980s.

Who said the French and British couldn’t get along? When they’re not lighting up the screen together in films like Anthony Minghella’s “The English Patient, the 1992 adaptation of Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights,” and recently in “The Return,” based on the last chapters of Homer’s “Odyssey,” pals and collaborators Juliette Binoche and Ralph Fiennes enjoy just getting to spend a little time with one another. And thankfully, Criterion gave them the chance to do just that.

Stepping into the Criterion Closet, Binoche and Fiennes pretended not to know one another, but soon became quite intimate, a not-so-unforeseen side effect of the tight quarters they found themselves in. Binoche led most of the selection efforts, with the “Conclave” star serving as the curious pupil, having heard of many films she pulled down, but not actually having seen them. After coming across Jim Jarmusch’s moody prison comedy “Down by Law,...

Admire the Criterion Collection, but can’t afford the thousands of dollars required to purchase all those DVDs? There’s a more elegant solution…just get a Max subscription. Warner Bros and HBO have announced a renewal of their deal with Criterion to keep decades of film classics in one streamable spot. “We are excited to continue to bring the Criterion Collection’s catalog of top-quality films to our audiences,” said Royce Battleman, Executive Vice President, Content Acquisitions, Warner Bros. Discovery. “Both the existing and new additions to the collection provide Max viewers with the opportunity to experience cinematic excellence as part of our offering.” Founded in 1984, the Criterion Collection is dedicated to the preservation, restoration and protection of the art of cinema. Their famous line of DVDs and Blu-Rays span a hundred years of moviemaking, publishing important classic and contemporary films from around the world. The list is too long to mention here,...

You have a couple options if you want to watch a film from Criterion's unparalleled collection of cinematic classics. You can buy a physical copy of the movie from their website (look out for those flash sales they're always doing), you can wait approximately 10 hours in line to visit their Mobile Closet (a.

While writing his upcoming “Superman” film, James Gunn adopted a dog that changed his life — and also the movie’s script.

Gunn revealed on X that Krypto, the super-dog owned by Clark Kent/Superman, will appear in the film arriving next summer. And yes, the pooch will have superpowers.

“Krypto was inspired by our dog Ozu, who we adopted shortly after I started writing ‘Superman,'” Gunn wrote on the former Twitter.

Gunn did not invent Krypto the Superdog, he’s just the first to bring the pup to a live-action film. Krypto is a DC comics staple and even had his own animated TV series “Krypto the Superdog” (2005-2006) on Cartoon Network. Krypto also appeared in 2022’s “DC’s League of Superpets” and was voiced by Dwayne Johnson. We don’t think Krypto will be a talking dog in “Superman” — that would probably be the single weirdest way for...

While in New York City to celebrate the 10th anniversary of her monster international hit “The Babadook,” Australian writer/director Jennifer Kent took a stop over at the Criterion Closet and proved that she not only enjoys making spooky movies — she likes watching them too. Her first pick of the shelf was one of the first films of the horror genre, the 1922 silent essay piece “Haxän: Witchcraft Through the Ages.” Kent described the film as “a huge inspiration for ‘Babadook.'”

She added, “It’s about the devil and about witchcraft, it’s also about women going nuts. Fantastic.”

Kent’s next selection was from her home country, Peter Weir’s 1977 mystery “The Last Wave,” which she’d initially avoided watching because she misconstrued the title.

“I’m embarrassed to say, I thought it was a film about surfing. It’s not a film about surfing,” said Kent. “It’s...

Francis Ford Coppola reveals a list of 20 movies that he highly recommends you watch and show "appreciation to the pictures that inspired" him. Widely considered one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, Coppola has directed movies such as The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, The Conversation, and Apocalypse Now. Over a decade after his last film, the 85-year-old director's latest movie is Megalopolis, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and is already fiercely divisive ahead of its theatrical release on September 27.

Ahead of Megalopolis' theatrical release, Francis Ford Coppola joined Letterboxd and created a list of 20 movies that he highly recommends. While not complete by any means, the list is simply 20 movies that he enjoys, have inspired him, and would recommend to any fan of cinema or aspiring filmmaker. Check out his list below:

French Cancan (1955) The Bad Sleep Well (1960) The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933) Shanghai Express...

Megalopolis director Francis Ford Coppola has joined Letterboxd, the social cataloguing service where members can rate and review films and keep track of what they’ve watched. I’m a little addicted. Coppola has shared a list of twenty films that he would recommend to any cinephile or aspiring filmmaker, which you can check out below.

French Cancan (Jean Renoir) The Bad Sleep Well (Akira Kurosawa) The Bitter Tea of General Yen (Frank Capra) Shanghai Express (Josef von Sternberg) The Awful Truth (Leo McCarey) The Ladies Man (Jerry Lewis) The Burmese Harp (Kon Ichikawa) Tokyo Story (Yasujirō Ozu) The Last Laugh (F.W. Murnau) The Blue Angel (Josef von Sternberg) Splendor in the Grass (Elia Kazan) Punch Drunk Love (Paul Thomas Anderson) Empire of the Sun (Steven Spielberg) Sunrise (F.W. Murnau) Joyless Street (G.W. Pabst) A Place in the Sun (George Stevens) The King of Comedy (Martin Scorsese) After...

With nearly 1,700 titles in their catalog, it’s hard to discern where exactly to start when exploring the Criterion Collection. To celebrate their 40th anniversary, the company has now made it a bit easier as they’ve unveiled CC40, a 40-film, 49-disc collection retailing for around $640 that is now the new go-to gift for that budding cinephile in your life.

“This monumental forty-film box set celebrates forty years of the Criterion Collection by gathering an electrifying mix of classic and contemporary films, and presenting them with all their special features and essays in a deluxe clothbound, slipcased edition,” they note. “CC40’s eclectic selection includes the releases most frequently chosen by the hundreds of filmmakers, actors, writers, and other movie-loving luminaries who have visited Criterion over the years, as documented in our popular Closet Picks video series. Neither a historical survey nor a top-forty compilation, this exciting, personal, unpredictable anthology...

The family drama is something of a stable within the Japanese film industry, with a long tradition and many big names as well as legitimate masterpieces attached to it. Similar to other cultures, the family drama is far more than a culmination of conflicts within a community of people, but rather a reflection of the political, economic and cultural challenges within a country. Directors such as Hirokazu Koreeda, whose career is basically founded on the perfection of the genre, have created works dealing with traditional family values being questioned because of various trends and developments. Based on an original work by author Akiko Shimoju, director Okayama Chikako wants to aim for similar acclaim with her adaptation of “Disease of Family”, telling the story of three families and their way of facing a particularly taxing obstacle.

Disease of Family is screening at Japan FilmFest Hamburg

“Disease of Family” starts with the story of Fujita,...

The 23rd edition of the Transilvania International Film Festival, kicked off Friday night with a sold-out screening of Dogman, the canine-focused revenge thriller by the French veteran Luc Besson, with Dogman co-star Jojo T. Gibbs in attendance.

Some 3,500 viewers backed Unirii Square in Cluj-Napoca for the start of the 11-day festival, which runs through June 24. The biggest film extravaganza in Romania, the festival is one of the premier events on the Eastern European industry calendar, with more than 200 films, exhibitions, concerts, talks and special events scheduled, and around 1,000 industry professionals expected.

Alongside Jojo T. Gibbs, most recently seen in Alex Garland’s Civil War, the TIFF guest list this year includes Italian filmmaker Daniele Luchetti (The Yes Man), who will be honored with the festival’s special award for contribution to world cinema; and Romanian film and theater legend Catrinel Dumitrescu (Aurora), who will receive the excellence award at the closing gala on June 22nd.

A Story of Floating Weeds / Floating Weeds: Two Films by Yasujiro Ozu on Blu-ray released to the Criterion Collection on May 7th, 2024.

This marked only my third and forth film by Yasujiro Ozu. I already owned the Criterion Collection releases of Tokyo Story and Good Morning, both of which I thoroughly enjoyed, with Good Morning instantly becoming one of my favorite experiences with Japanese cinema. Part of what makes the Criterion Collection so great is the way it makes important films easily accessible for collectors.

A Story of Floating Weeds / Floating Weeds: Two Films by Yasujiro Ozu Plot

An actor traveling with a theater group set up shop in a small village where he reconnects with an old lover and his estranged son. Emotions boil over as the former lovers rekindle their romantic flame.

The Critique

Floating Weeds

It’s always interesting when a filmmaker remakes one of their own films.

To mark the centenary of Yasujiro Ozu's birth, Hou Hsiao-Hsien made his own Tokyo story, “Café Lumière,” a film with Hou's individuality, but full of subtle nuances in tribute to the Japanese master. The family drama gets a modern-day setting, with cultural change seen across the generations.

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Yoko (Taiwanese-Japanese musician Yo Hitoto) is a journalist who switches her time between Tokyo and Taiwan. Researching Taiwanese composer Wen-Ye Jiang, she seeks out a cafe the composer frequented when based in Tokyo. And in tribute to Ozu, who favored dialogue over story, that is about that in terms of plot.

Family and its changing nature is a theme hinted at throughout, with Yoko being pregnant by her boyfriend in Taiwan. However, she has a somewhat blasé attitude towards the pregnancy, and indeed her boyfriend; unconcerned as to whether she sees him again,...

Turner Classic Movies has picked up the exclusive North American television rights to the forthcoming documentary The Ozu Diaries, from Oscar-nominated filmmaker Daniel Raim. An intimate exploration of the life and legacy of Japanese cinematic master Yasujiro Ozu, the film will premiere on the festival circuit this year, followed by a theatrical release in 2025.

Produced with the support of the Ozu estate and Shochiku, the historic Japanese studio behind the director’s greatest works, The Ozu Diaries is a cinema history documentary that portrays the iconic filmmaker through his diaries, personal letters and interviews, plus rare archival footage, movie clips and new insights from some of his closest collaborators.

The project was initiated in 2023 to mark the 120th anniversary of Ozu’s birth. The movie will trace his journey from a rebellious young painter and cinephile in 1920s Japan to the globally renowned creator of classics like I Was Born,...

After a career as producer and few short films, independent director Kim Cho-hee brings to light her debut feature, “Lucky Chan-sil”, a charming story of, well … a film producer, dealing with the challenges that life throws at her. Like many of this year's movies, her work was caught in the COVID19 storm, just in between Festival runs and (cancelled) theatrical releases; therefore, after gaining a rich palmarès in Festivals (Kbs Independent Film Award and the Cgv Arthouse Award at Biff and the Audience Award at the Seoul Independent Film Festival), got stalled abruptly. Hopefully not for long.

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Offbeat sweet ‘n' sour comedy “Lucky Chan-sil” follows the titular character, an indie film producer in her forties played by Gang Mal-geum, going through a moment of intense crisis. She has dedicated her work-life and career to the same director, a well-known auteur,...

Leading filmmakers from China, Germany, Japan and the U.S. spoke of their admiration for Yasujiro Ozu as part of the celebrations at Tokyo International Film Festival for the 120th anniversary of the legendary Japanese director’s birth.

Wim Wenders opened proceedings by introducing a screening of a 4K digitally restored version of the 1959 comedy Good Morning, describing Ozu as “the master,” before a talk event featuring Jia Zhangke, Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Kelly Reichardt.

A passionate acolyte of Ozu, Wenders shot a documentary about the acclaimed director titled Tokyo-ga four decades ago, and 10 years later came to the Tokyo fest for his 90th anniversary celebrations.

Good Morning, the second film he shot in color, is a light but perceptive chronicle of family life in postwar Japan of the kind Ozu was so adept at creating.

“Watching Good Morning for the first time in a long time, I was struck...

The idea of putting together a group that enjoys working as a team is a notion as old as time, yet there remains something special about the notion of an artistic repertory company. This is a group that exists not just to perform a task with a certain level of quality, but to explore each of their own personalities (as well as each other's) while plumbing the human condition for new corners of interest. In other words, it's about combining the familiarity and camaraderie of long-time friends and coworkers with the blank slate of artistic creation.

Of course, these explorations can't go as far or be as truthful without a remarkable amount of trust being involved, and that's precisely what director Martin Scorsese values in his own "repertory company" members. Some of Scorsese's detractors may think of his continued casting of Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio as a sort of laziness,...

Apple Original Films’ Killers of the Flower Moon marks the 16th time Martin Scorsese has worked with either Robert De Niro or Leonardo DiCaprio in a feature-length film, yet it’s the first Scorsese film that includes both actors in starring roles. Scorsese and De Niro began their 50-year association with 1973’s Mean Streets. 1976’s Taxi Driver, 1977’s New York, New York, 1980’s Raging Bull, 1983’s The King of Comedy, 1990’s Goodfellas, 1991’s Cape Fear, and 1995’s Casino followed, cementing their relationship as one of the most successful actor-director teams.

After a nearly 25-year break, Scorsese and De Niro reunited for 2019’s The Irishman, and now they’re back together again for 2023’s Killers of the Flower Moon.

During the two-decade break in the Scorsese / De Niro films, the Oscar-winning director cast Leonardo DiCaprio in 2002’s Gangs of New York, 2004’s The Aviator, 2006’s The Departed, 2010’s Shutter Island, and...

Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” is a culmination of sorts for Scorsese and his two most frequent collaborators, Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio. The upcoming Apple film – which debuts in theaters on October 20 via Paramount – marks the 10th time Scorsese and De Niro have worked together on a feature and the sixth time Scorsese and DiCaprio have joined forces. It’s also the first film of Scorsese’s lengthy career to feature both actors simultaneously.

That it took so long for the three men to work together on a film might seem surprising – Scorsese has said De Niro was at least about both “Gangs of New York” and “The Departed” – but it was also kind of inevitable. After all, Scorsese first heard about DiCaprio from De Niro after the “Raging Bull” Oscar winner starred in “This Boy’s Life” opposite the young actor.

“He said, ‘You should...

Ozu Yasujiro, the leading Japanese film director behind classics including “Tokyo Story” and “Late Spring,” has had his double birth and death anniversaries – Ozu died in 1963 on the day of his 60th birthday, a little more than a year after the release of his last film “An Autumn Afternoon” – celebrated throughout 2023 at places as varied as the Cannes Film Festival, Los Angeles’ Margaret Herrick Library and the Taiwan Film & Audiovisual Institute.

But it falls to October’s Tokyo International Film Festival to put on this year’s biggest and most comprehensive reconstruction of Ozu’s surprisingly varied career.

Working in conjunction with the National Film Archive of Japan, the festival will present an extensive retrospective that covers almost all the films that Ozu directed (TIFF/Nfaj Classics: Ozu Yasujiro Week) from Oct. 24-29.

Ozu spent his entire career, from camera assistant in 1923 to renown director in 1962, as an employee of major Japanese studio Shochiku,...

Korean-Canadian writer-director Celine Song’s tremendous feature debut tells the poignant tale of childhood sweethearts separated by fate and thousands of miles

This supremely confident feature debut from Korean-Canadian writer-director Celine Song is a spine-tingling gem – a tale of not-so-brief encounters between star-crossed souls, played out over a period of 24 years. Combining the aching yearning of Wong Kar-Wai’s In the Mood for Love with the casual intimacy of Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy, it paints a picture of unresolved affection as delicate as it is profound, interweaving timeless themes of fate and providence with more playfully down-to-earth musings on happenstance and shapeshifting identity. The result, which has one foot in South Korea and the other in North America, feels at times like an impossible mashup of Davy Chou’s Return to Seoul and Nora Ephron’s Sleepless in Seattle, shot through with a stoical melancholia that recalls the final...

Showtime’s Dreaming Whilst Black is not the story of its own making, but it kind of feels like it could be. Described as being “loosely inspired by real-life events,” the comedy follows Kwabena (co-creator Adjani Salmon), whom we find toiling away at a dreary office job while dreaming (figuratively and literally; he’s napping on the clock) of being a filmmaker.

But the road to making it is a rocky one for any novice — and, as the title hints, even more so for Black artists trying to forge ahead in an industry still dominated by white people. That Dreaming Whilst Black exists at all feels like a victory after watching Kwabena struggle to realize his vision amid financial troubles, unhelpful advice and skeptical film execs. That it comes blessed with such an observant eye and such a confident comic voice is cause for celebration.

Talent, Kwabena has in spades...

Further openers are Sony’s ’Equalizer 3’, Mub’s ’Passages’ and Lionsgate’s ‘Cobweb’ .

Seventeen new films launch into UK-Ireland cinemas this weekend in a sign of the release schedule returning to its pre-pandemic state; as exhibitors look for a post-Barbenheimer success, and to capitalise on this year’s National Cinema Day, on Saturday, September 2.

Tickets for all films are available for £3 at over 630 cinemas across the UK and Ireland; last year’s National Cinema Day brought in 1.46m admissions.

Angel Studios is releasing Alejandro Monteverde’s biographical drama Sound Of Freedom, about a government agent-turned-vigilante who aims to rescue children from sex traffickers,...

‘Perfect Days’ director Wim Wenders will also preside over the festival’s international competition jury.

Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days is set to open this year’s Tokyo International Film Festival, which has also set monster feature Godzilla Minus One as its closing film.

Perfect Days will receive its Asian premiere at TIFF, which runs from October 23 to November 1. The film premiered in Competition at Cannes in May, where lead actor Koji Yakusho received the best actor award, and will screen at Toronto in September.

Set in Tokyo, it follows a toiler cleaner who seems utterly content as he goes about...

If you are looking for a room in the coastal town of Onomichi, you better not check in at the Ohashi apartments. Except if you want your very own meet-and-greet with J-Pop Idol Shiori Kubo, who happens to play the ghost trapped inside room 101 in Natsuki Takahashi's “A Girl in My Room”.

A Girl in My Room is streaming as part of Jff+ Independent Cinema

Based on the popular manga by Chugaku Yamamoto, the story revolves around the heartbroken Yohei, who gets dumped by his girlfriend and is left behind in the former love nest. Out of nowhere, a curious girl ghost appears and wants to experience a feeling she never felt during her life as a human, love. Yohei is annoyed by her curiosity and even tries to exorcise her, but slowly realises that she is more human than he thought.

The fantasy romantic comedy was filmed on...

In 2022, Jane Campion made history as the first female director to be nominated for Best Director twice. And then, for “The Power of Dog,” she followed through and won, becoming the third female director to take home the top prize.

The win was a triumphant and long overdue achievement for Campion, who has consistently been one of the best directors actively working since her 1989 feature debut “Sweetie.” The black comedy about a dysfunctional family marked the New Zealand-born director as a great talent immediately, entering the Cannes Film Festival and taking home an Independent Spirit Award for Best Foreign Film shortly afterwards. Just a year later, Campion released her first masterpiece: the Janet Frame biopic, “An Angel at My Table.”

From there, her 1993 feature “The Piano” netted Campion her first Best Director nomination, while efforts like “The Portrait of a Lady,” “Holy Smoke,” “In the Cut,” and “Bright Star” received acclaim.

James Gunn's sci-fi adventure film "Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3" takes place on a free-floating space station that was once the head of an ineffable space deity. On board the head, called Knowhere, a wide variety of aliens and creatures live in a cramped complex of apartments, trying to reside as comfortably as possible. Knowhere is also the home to the Guardians of the Galaxy, a loosely associated group of aliens — and one human — who occasionally commit acts of heroism for hire. In the first "Guardians" film, they came into the possession of Cosmo, a Soviet space dog that was salvaged by an unusual being called the Collector. By the third "Guardians," Cosmo could speak through a psychic collar (Cosmo was voiced by Maria Bakalova) and float objects with her mind.

Cosmo's breed is never spoken aloud, but she looks like a labrador or a golden retriever. In other words,...

Tokyo Appointment

Noted Japanese director Ando Momoko has been named as the ambassador for this year’s Tokyo International Film Festival.

She also features, alongside her father Okuda Eiji in the festival’s newly-released poster, which recreates a scene from Ozu Yasujiro’s “Tokyo Story” and in which Okuda and Ando represent the classic film’s Ryu Chishu and Hara Setsuko characters. The poster image, shot at the rooftop garden of Kitte Marunouchi Building, with Tokyo Station in the background, was designed by Koshino Junko, who has created the festival’s key visuals for the past three years.

Tokyo Iff 2023 festival poster.

This is the 120th anniversary of Japanese film master Ozu’s birth, and the 60th anniversary of his death.

The festival, which says that its key themes this year will be “diversity” and “the possibilities of cinema,” will run Oct. 23 – Nov. 1 in the Hibiya-Yurakucho-Marunouchi-Ginza area.

The 36thTIFF opening...

Japan’s Tokyo Film Festival (TIFF) has revealed the official poster for its 2023 edition, which pays tribute to the country’s seminal filmmaker Yasujirō Ozu on the 120th anniversary of his birth. Check out the full poster below.

The poster was designed as a visual tribute to Ozu’s 1952 pic Tokyo Story and features actor-filmmaker Eiji Okuda and his daughter, filmmaker Momoko Ando, representing the relationship between Ryu Chishu and Hara Setsuko in Ozu’s film.

The resulting image was shot on the rooftop garden of the Kitte Marunouchi Building, with Tokyo station’s domes in the background. The visuals were created by Junko Koshino, a Japanese fashion designer who has worked on TIFF’s visuals since 2021. The posters will be displayed at theaters from August 18. This year, Momoko has also been appointed to the ceremonial role of TIFF festival navigator, formerly known as festival ambassador. Beginning as a filmmaker, Momoko now also operates an arthouse cinema in Kochi, southwestern Japan.

Discussing her new role, Momoko said: “Cinema can embody any story. Cinema can change the world. The world can be changed by films. I honestly believe that is true. Films reflect our thoughts. They project invisible winds, tiny creatures, and all life. They memorize and record the past and future in our minds. Now in 2023, what will we gaze at, and where will we be led? Film festivals are the compass of the world. Now, here, from Tokyo.”

Running October 23 — November 1, TIFF will host a large-scale tribute to Ozu throughout its program. Specific details about the festival’s Ozu tribute have yet to be announced.

The 36th TIFF opening ceremony will take place at the Tokyo Takarazuka Theater, as it did last year, while the closing ceremony will be held at Toho Cinemas Hibiya. In addition to three large theaters, Marunouchi Toei, Marunouchi Piccadilly, and Toho Cinemas Hibiya, Hulic Hall Tokyo will join as a new screening venue, along with TIFF’s regular theaters, Kadokawa Cinema Yurakucho, Cine Switch Ginza, Humantrust Cinema Yurakucho and Toho Cinemas Chanter.

The selection of two restored films by Ozu Yasujiro for the Cannes Classics section will kick-off a six-month long celebration of the iconic Japanese auteur around the world.

Cannes revealed last week that it will showcase Ozu’s 1947 “Record of a Tenement Gentleman” and his 1950 picture “The Muneteka Sisters.”

The screenings mark the 120th anniversary of Ozu’s birth and the 60th anniversary of his death. Ozu died in 1963 on the day of his 60th birthday, a little more than a year after the release of his last film “An Autumn Afternoon.”

Major studio, Shochiku, where Ozu spent the majority of career and made his iconic movies, is planning a series of curated retrospectives, festival screenings, and special events around the world that pay homage to his enduring legacy as one of the most influential directors in cinema. These will last until the end of 2023.

Shochiku was responsible for the...

The work of Paul Dale is never likely to be considered great art, but nevertheless, there is an art to it. Killer Kites is, in its own way, an exercise in the tradition of Lars Von Trier’s Dogville or Yasujiro Ozo’s Tokyo Story. It’s stripped right down to a basic formula, with minimalist sets and props. Dale and Frosch know how to structure and frame a horror film so well that practically any monster could be slotted into it – this would be easy to recut into a fresh feature with a different creature and some minor dubbing. Whilst one might interpret that as a bad thing, it’s remarkably entertaining to watch.

Dale’s last effort was the similarly pleasing Sewer Gators, which is hard to overlook, as he takes every opportunity for product placement here and the two films share some of their...

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Roxy Cinema

The Last Temptation of Christ and The Flowers of St. Francis have 35mm showings for Easter Weekend, while Barbarella and The Terminator also screen on film; Ken Jacobs’ Two Wrenching Departures plays on Sunday with Jacobs present.

IFC Center

Gregg Araki presents Something Wild on 35mm this Friday, while his film The Doom Generation opens in a director’s cut; Beau Travail offers a Claire Denis fix; Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, and Before Midnight screen, while Akira and Barb Wire have late showings, with Wild Things showing on 35mm.

Bam

One of Shôhei Imamura’s last films, Warm Water Under a Red Bridge, is screening, while “Queering the Canon” offers films by Lizzie Borden, Funeral Parade of Roses, and more.

Museum of the Moving Image

A series on Jeanne Dielman‘s influences brings the film itself and work by Varda,...

The world of Japanese cinema is one of the most acclaimed and beloved. This video examines many of the classics, the most essential films ever made in Japan or by Japanese filmmakers. Why is the appreciation of Japanese cinema so enduring? "Narrator Luiza Liz Bond emphasized the 'heightened aesthetic sensibility' of Japanese filmmakers, on display in 'the tender observation of Ozu's Tokyo Story, the poetic rhapsody of Kurosawa's Dreams, the harrowing feminine gaze of Videophobia." The video essay is split into different chapters covering different styles of films: Bushidō, Wabi-Sabi, Mono No Aware, Yūgen, Guro, and Hen. Many all-timer films are featured including The Sword of Doom, Seven Samurai, Hausu, Tetsuo: The Iron Man, Tampopo, Love Exposure, Sansho the Bailiff, Tokyo Sonata + many more. Discover films below. // Continue Reading ›...

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Museum of the Moving Image

Tokyo Story plays on 35mm this Friday and Sunday.

Film Forum

Bob Fosse’s Sweet Charity plays in a 4K restoration; Ken Loach’s The Spirit of ’45 and The Conformist continue their runs; a Jeanne Moreau retrospective highlights her three, rarely screened directing efforts as well as her onscreen work; Panahi’s The White Balloon plays on 35mm this Sunday.

Anthology Film Archives

Films by Luis Buñuel screen through the weekend in Essential Cinema.

Film at Lincoln Center

A retrospective of Tod Browning’s dark world brings the likes of Freaks and Dracula, while the newly restored Drylongso continues screening. (Read our interview with director Cauleen Smith here.)

IFC Center

Before Sunrise screens, while Fight Club, Akira, Jaws, Barb Wire, and Poison Ivy have late showings.

Roxy Cinema

Synecdoche, New York and Paul Williams...

While we’ve known the results of Jeanne Dielman Tops Sight and Sound‘s 2022 Greatest Films of All-Time List”>Sight & Sound’s once-in-a-decade greatest films of all-time poll for a few months now, the recent release of the individual ballots has given data-crunching cinephiles a new opportunity to dive deeper. We have Letterboxd lists detailing all 4,400+ films that received at least one vote and another expanding the directors poll, spreadsheets calculating every entry, and now a list ranking how many votes individual directors received for their films.

Tabulated by Genjuro, the list of 35 directors, with two pairs, puts Alfred Hitchcock back on top, while Chantal Akerman is at number two. Elsewhere in the top ten are David Lynch, Francis Ford Coppola, Jean-Luc Godard, Agnès Varda, Orson Welles, Yasujirō Ozu, and Stanley Kubrick, and tied for the tenth spot is Wong Kar Wai and Ingmar Bergman.

Check out the list below,...

This year, all the Oscar-contending directors are nominated for original screenplay: the Daniels, Todd Field, Martin McDonagh, Ruben Östlund and Steven Spielberg (writing with Tony Kushner).

This is the first time it’s happened in AMPAS history.

The only year that came close was 2017, when all five helmers had written or co-written their scripts, though they didn’t all get writing noms.

So here’s Film History 101.

In Hollywood lore, Preston Sturges is often credited as the first scribe to become a hyphenate, as writer-director of the 1940 “The Great McGinty.” But as with all Hollywood “facts,” there is only an element of truth here.

In the next few years, he was joined by some heavyweights: Orson Welles (“Citizen Kane”) and John Huston (“The Maltese Falcon”) in 1941; Leo McCarey (co-writer of “Going My Way”); Billy Wilder (writing with Raymond Chandler) for “Double Indemnity” in 1944; and Joseph L. Mankiewicz (“Dragonwyck”), 1946.

However, a writer-director wasn’t an innovation.

The novels of Kazuo Ishiguro have, as the Nobel Prize committee asserted in 2017, “Uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world.” The beloved Japanese-born British writer, 68, has gained an international reputation for his coiled, emotional works such as “The Remains of the Day,” “Never Let Me Go” and “The Buried Giant,” among others.

Ishiguro has also written a few movie scripts, including for directors Guy Maddin and James Ivory. But his screenplay of 2022’s “Living,” an adaptation of Akira Kurosawa’s “Ikiru” (1952), set in 1950s London, marks Ishiguro’s purest expression of his talent in the film world. The Nobel committee’s “uncovered the abyss” quote could apply to this story of a reserved bureaucrat (played by an incandescent Bill Nighy) facing his own mortality.

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Oscar Nominations 2023: Andrea Riseborough, Brian Tyree Henry and Paul Mescal Break Into the Race (Complete List)

On Tuesday,...

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Two of the most anticipated Japanese films showing at the Venice Film Festival this year — Kei Ishikawa’s mystery drama A Man (2022) and a digitally remastered version of Yasujirō Ozu’s timeless classic A Hen in the Wind (1948) — share a uniquely curious distinction. The two Japanese films, separated by 74 years, were both written in the exact same room.

Ozu, one of the great masters of cinema history, famously spent long stretches of the 1940s and 1950s — his most productive period — residing and working at Chigasaki-kan, a small ryokan, or traditional Japanese inn, located on a quiet stretch of coast to the southwest of Tokyo. Ozu’s hideaway within the inn was its “niban no oheya,” or “room 2.” A modest space befitting an Ozu drama, the room was designed in Japan’s traditional washitsu style: tatami mats, a simple floor-level table and sliding shoji...

After her directorial debut “Love Letter” in 1953, Kinuyo Tanaka had received some international recognition, with the feature being a contestant at Cannes Film Festival in 1954. It also marked the end of her working relationship with director Kenji Mizoguchi, with whom she had collaborated on “Oharu” and “Sansho the Bailiff”, which cemented her reputation as one of the leading ladies of Japanese cinema. However, while the famous filmmaker was against this next step in her career, the experience of her first directorial effort encouraged her to continue working behind the camera as well. Her next project would be “The Moon Has Risen”, a family drama/ light comedy, which was co-written by Yasujiro Ozu, who originally had planned to direct it himself. While Ozu’s signature themes are still quite obvious, Tanaka proved her growth as a visual storyteller, making her sophomore feature a remarkable development in her career.

“The Moon Has...

One Shot is a series that seeks to find an essence of cinema history in one single image of a movie. Surrounded by the stillness and tranquillity of nature, anchored by the building facade of her eldest son’s home, Tomi (Chieko Higashiyama) quietly watches her grandson play with the grass of the fields that surround them. This enigmatic shot is from Yasujirō Ozu‘s Tokyo Story (1953), a film widely considered to be the director’s magnus opus and one deeply rooted in the examination of everyday life in 1950s Japan, yet universal in its exploration of familial relations, loss, and the upending of tradition. The story follows an aging couple, played by Ozu regulars Chishu Ryu and Higashiyama, who travel from their tiny town of Onomichi to bustling postwar Tokyo in order to visit their adult children. The couple, however, discover that they are too preoccupied with their demanding...

Okinawa and its status is one of those difficult subjects not often discussed when considering it as an island paradise. Part Japanese holiday destination, part US army base, it is used and controlled by those other than Okinawans. In one of his lesser-known works, Nagisa Oshima explores Okinawa as the illegitimate child of distant parents, but one rich in culture.

Dear Summer Sister is screening at Japan Society

14-year-old Sunaoko (Hiromi Kurita) travels from Tokyo to Naha, Okinawa, with her father’s young fiancée Momoko (Lily) in search of her half-brother whom she has never met. On arrival, she meets a young tour guide and musician (Shoji Ishibashi) who translates Okinawan dialect for tourists. Searching for her brother’s mother, Tsuru (Akiko Koyama), it soon becomes clear that the tour guide is the brother she has been looking for. With the arrival of Sunaoko’s father Kikuchi (Hosei Komatsu), discussions...

Bruce Tuchman-backed Rialto International has launched a branded on-demand streaming service in Japan, focused on independent film, and housed on Amazon’s Prime Video Channels platform.

Rialto Channel launched in 1999 in New Zealand, where it was initially branded as The Sundance Channel. It established itself as an award-winning and industry-leading indie film destination for over twenty years.

In Japan, the Rialto-branded venue will feature current and iconic independent films. Confirmed content at launch or going forward includes Chloe Zhao’s “The Rider”; an homage to the recently departed director Peter Bogdanovich with “The Last Picture Show”; Brad Pitt and Jason Statham in Guy Richie’s “Snatch”; Michael Caine in “Harry Brown”; Sean Connery in Gus Van Sant’s “Finding Forrester”; Ewan McGregor and actor/director Don Cheadle’s “Miles Ahead”; Jean-Jacques Beineix’s “Diva”; Michelle Williams in Wim Wenders’ “Land of Plenty”; Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman and Jude Law in “Gattaca”; and “8Mm,...

It's Beauty And The Beast at root, but as with any retelling there's depth and nuance to what it considers beautiful, what it considers beastly. Belle is not just a tour de force of animation but a loving homage to film-making, dripping with reference that rewards not just fans of animation but of movies in general. It starts with an expanding horizon, aptly, and will hopefully provide the same for its audience.

With two distinct animation styles for the 'real' and the 'meta', the high school days of Suzu and the digitally enhanced realm of her alter-ego Belle intertwine. In the real the backgrounds are painted, beautifully so, one location straight from Tokyo Story. Over them characters whose simplicity draws from animation traditions, outlines gaining features with each step towards the camera, anger replacing mouths with improbable outlines and flushed cheeks that Snoopy would recognise.

In 'U', accessed through a.

The second of three blocks of the Asian Cinema Education International Journalism and Film Criticism Course focused on journalistic skills which are essential for film festivals organisers.

There are two ways to take part in the course:

in the full version, with registration, the participant gets the possibility of direct contact with tutors and consultation of own written work (registration ended on September 28);the webinars can also be watched without registration.

Participation in the course is free of charge. All webinars are conducted in English only – this is the working language of the whole course.

You can find the whole course here Festival skills – course info

Festivals play an important role in the life cycle of a film but are equally important for film critics. New talents find an audience there, like-minded people from different places meet. Not only is it a place for film critics and journalists to broaden their horizons,...

Becoming a parent is one of the most significant moments in one’s life, which is at times overcast by this event being somewhat expected of you by society or your elders. Considering the development of our world, more than once people decide not to have children, as the responsibility is simply too great, and they simply cannot respond differently to the aforementioned dilemma. Director Hal Torii found himself facing the same question and made a short feature titled “Tokyo Story” about his thoughts on bringing a child into this world, essentially telling his own Tokyo Story.

Tokyo Story screened at Japanese Avant-Garde and Experimental Film Festival

As explained in the description to the feature, the two-minute-short tells the story of a mother giving birth, and how the relationship with her child evolves over time. While her baby is in need of her and searches for her in the streets of the Japanese capital,...

We're revisiting 1937 this month leading up to the next Supporting Actress Smackdown. As always Nick Taylor will suggest a few alternates to Oscar's ballot.

We begin 1937 with Fay Bainter, the third-ever winner of the Supporting Actress Oscar for Jezebel in 1938 (you may have heard about it last year!) in Leo McCarey’s Make Way for Tomorrow. McCarey viewed the film as his greatest achievement, to the point that when he received his Best Director Oscar for The Awful Truth the same year Make Way for Tomorrow earned no nominations, he opened his acceptance speech by saying he won for the wrong movie. We can discuss the considerable merits of both films about couples splitting up and staying together, along with how brilliantly they showcase McCarey’s skills with tone, blocking, performance shaping, scene construction, as well as its enduring legacy in films like Tokyo Story and Love is Strange. Bainter...

Fresh off Juho Kuosmanen’s win at Cannes – where his “Compartment No. 6” was awarded the Grand Prix in July, sharing the prize with Asghar Farhadi’s “A Hero” – Finland’s Aamu Film Company will focus its attention on Tia Kouvo’s “Family Time,” scheduled to shoot in February and March 2022.

Produced by Jussi Rantamäki and Emilia Haukka, the film, primarily set at Christmas, will show a family of eight struggling to communicate and echoing Tolstoy’s statement that while all happy families are alike, every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

“I have been working with the same directors for years, saying no to many interesting projects. Then I saw Tia’s graduation short and realized we have to find room for one more,” says Rantamäki, also behind Kuosmanen’s Un Certain Regard winner “The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki” and Hamy Ramezan’s Berlinale entry “Any Day Now.

Japanese Avant-garde and Experimental Film Festival are very excited to announce their full programme for Jaeff 2021: Bodies. Curated alongside the delayed 2020 Olympics, this year’s festival aims to explore the human body – in motion, at rest, in agony and in ecstasy.

Tickets go on sale to Barbican Members on 21 July, and to the general public on the 22nd. Stay tuned to our socials for further info (and links!).

Jaeff look forward to seeing you this Autumn!

Thursday 16/9

18:00 – Nanami: The Inferno of First Love + A.I. Mama

Friday 17/9

18:00 Portrait of Mr O + Anma + Rose Color Dance + In Passing

20:30 – Lovers are Wet

Saturday 18/9

Navel and a Bomb

17:50 – Boxer + Transparent, the world is.

Sunday 19/9

11:00 – Japan’s Cinematic Body (Panel Discussion)

13:20 Nippon Express Carries the Olympics to Tokyo + Tokyo Story

16:00 – Tokyo Olympiad...