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In 1996, Masayuki Suo‘s heartwarming feature “Shall We Dance?” charmed critics and audiences, receiving additional acclaim following its subsequent international release. Its major success even spawned an American remake starring Richard Gere and Jennifer Lopez. With Suo’s original hit gaining renewed attention thanks to the 4K restoration of the original uncut version and theatrical re-release by Film Movement, it’s the perfect time to revisit what makes this film so enduringly special.

The premise is quite simple. Salaryman Shohei Sugiyama leads a stable life with a steady job, a loving wife and child, and a comfortable home. Even with his clear love for his family, he feels that something is missing, a depression brought on by a longing to fill that personal emptiness. One evening during his commute home, he notices a beautiful woman gazing out the window of a dance studio. Infatuated, he visits the building to find out who she is.

Masayuki Suô’s beloved romantic comedy “Shall We Dance?” is finally getting a proper U.S. release. The 1996 feature stars Oscar nominee Kôji Yakusho in one of his breakout roles as a married accountant who becomes intoxicated by the world of competitive ballroom dancing. Yakusho most recently led “Perfect Days.”

The official synopsis for “Shall We Dance?” reads: “Shohei Sugiyama (Yakusho) seems to have it all — a high-paying job as an accountant, a beautiful home, a caring wife and a doting daughter he loves dearly. However, he feels something is missing in his life. One day, while commuting on the train, he spots a beautiful woman staring wistfully out a window and eventually decides to find her. His search leads him head-first into the world of competitive ballroom dancing.”

Tamiyo Kusakari, Naoto Takenaka, Eri Watanabe, Yû Tokui, Hiromasa Taguchi, Reiko Kusamura, and Hideko Hara also star.

The Japanese film was released in the U.

It’s busy and Twister-y at the box office this weekend, but a few indies are hoping to catch a breeze with very well-reviewed Oddity looking to expand the market for high-end horror and Widow Clicquot to attract fans of good period films and bubbly.

Oddity from IFC Films, is a supernatural home-invasion horror from writer-director Damian McCarthy (Caveat). It opens on 790 screens, the widest new indie release this week. Carolyn Bracken stars as Dani, who is restoring an old castle in rural Cork County, Ireland, with her husband Ted (Gwilym Lee), a doctor at a facility for the criminally insane. When Dani is brutally murdered, her blind occultist twin sister Darcy (also Bracken) goes after those responsible using inherited haunted items as her tools of revenge. Premiered in SXSW’s Midnighter section, taking the Audience Award. At 98% with critics on Rotten Tomatoes.

Vertical’s Indie drama Widow Cliquot is...

It could be argued that the closest relative to films about dementia is the murder mystery. There are certainly many common features: a victim and an enigmatic killer; false memories and red herrings; clues from which an identity must be pieced together; and a (usually jubilant) resolution in which said identity is revealed, if only briefly. In this sense, Kei Chika-ura’s latest feature, Great Absence, is not natural and convincing in spite of its thrilling (if not always successful) blend of Florian Zeller’s The Father and Bong Joon-ho’s Memories of Murder, but because of it.

After a workshop of Ionescu’s Exit the King, Takashi (Mirai Moriyama), an actor of moderate fame, receives a call from the police. His father Yohji (Tatsuya Fuji), whom he hasn’t seen for some twenty years, has just been detained by local authorities after placing a phony distress call that resulted...

Up-and-coming filmmaker Kei Chikaura unveils a second impressive feature film with “Great Absence.” Where his previous movie, “Complicity,” focused on cross-cultural communication, for his newest project, Chikaura utilizes personal experiences in a co-written effort with Keita Kumano to tell a story of family reconciliation. Collaborating with the director again is legendary actor Tatsuya Fuji, best known internationally for starring in Nagisa Oshima's films “In the Realm of the Senses” and “Empire of Passion.”

Great Absence is screening at Toronto Japanese Film Festival

Takashi is an actor based in Tokyo preparing for his latest role, with guidance from his producer, Yuki, who also happens to be his wife. While rehearsing, he is summoned by law enforcement to receive news that his father, Yohji, whom he has an estranged relationship with, had his home raided following a distress call. Reluctant due to personal resentment toward his parent, he eventually decides to...

When memory slips away, what do we know to be real anymore?

That’s the question asked by “Great Absence,” a new film that sees legendary Japanese actor Tatsuya Fuji return to the big screen in a father-son drama about life, death, mortality, and morality. Filmmaker Kei Chika-ura writes and directs the feature which centers on a rekindled family amid an Alzheimers diagnosis and a suicide.

The official synopsis reads: Distanced from his father Yohji (Tatsuya Fuji) for twenty years, actor Takashi (Mirai Moriyama) is brought back home by a jarring police call. Yohji has disconnected from reality due to dementia, and his second wife Naomi (Hideko Hara) is missing. Asked where she is, the old man replies that she committed suicide. While trying to find out about the stepmother, Takashi traces the past of Yohji he has never been able to accept. And since Yohji abandoned his family 20 years ago for Naomi,...

Comprising international premieres, short programs, and some of the country’s finest-ever films in new restorations, 2024’s Japan Cuts––running July 10-21 at New York’s Japan Society––has been unveiled. It’s in the festival’s nature that numerous works and directors are lesser-known on American shores, though a cursory search has one regularly stopping: new films by Takeshi Kitano (Kubi), Shunji Iwai (Kyrie), Shinya Tsukamoto (Shadow of Fire), and Gakuryu Ishii (The Box Man) populate the selection. Meanwhile, Hideaki Anno’s modern classic Shin Godzilla debuts in a new, black-and-white cut Shin Godzilla: ORTHOchromatic.

Its classics section is three-for-three: Ishii’s August in the Water, Shinji Somai’s Moving, and Toshiharu Ikeda Mermaid Legend, which is more or less one of the greatest films ever made. One can anticipate at least a couple of Japan Cuts’ current unknowns are tomorrow’s figureheads.

See the full lineup below:...

In the wake of Hayao Miyazaki’s latest Oscar win for “The Boy and the Heron” and the VOD dominance of “Godzilla Minus One,” Japanese cinema continues to be as vital as ever to American audiences. That should make the upcoming edition of Japan Cuts, the annual film festival celebrating Japanese cinema co-produced by Japan Society, one of the most exciting events on New York cinephiles’ summer calendars.

The lineup, which IndieWire can exclusively reveal, contains a mix of American and New York premieres alongside a curated selection of newly restored classics. Notable titles include “Shin Godzilla: ORTHOchromatic,” a new black-and-white version of Hideaki Anno’s 2016 kaiju blockbuster; and “Shadow of Fire,” the war drama from “Tetsuo: The Iron Man” director Shinya Tsukamoto that premiered at the 2023 Venice Film Festival.

“We couldn’t be more amazed by this year’s festival,” Peter Tatara, director of film at Japan Society, who...

The belief that the dead live on in our memories is often the only comfort anyone can think to offer the bereaved, or those in the process of losing a loved one. But for Takashi (Mirai Moriyama), the introspective adult son at the heart of Kei Chika-ura’s quietly tectonic heartbreaker, that comfort is unavailable on multiple levels. Not only has he been long estranged from his father, Yohji (a shattering San Sebastian Best Performance-winning Tatsuya Fuji), but Yohji’s own precipitous descent into the fog of dementia means that whatever Takashi can now learn of him, at this late stage, is jumbled and fragmentary and possibly false. How can we adequately remember someone who cannot remember himself?

Like so much of “Great Absence,” that question is posed as a kind of mystery, made all the eerier by the ordinariness of the clues that tease its solution — an uncanceled meal delivery,...

Tatsuya Fuji, Mirai Moriyama star.

Gaga Corporation has acquired international sales rights excluding Japan on Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) Platform entry Great Absence ahead of its European premiere in San Sebastian later this month.

Tatsuya Fuji and dance artist Mirai Moriyama star in the recent TIFF world premiere, which marks director Kei Chika-ura’s second feature after Complicity premiered at 2018 TIFF.

Great Absence is inspired by Chika-ura’s own experiences and centres on Takashi, a man who has been estranged from his father Yohji for 20 years and returns home with his wife after receiving a call from the police...

Great Absence, the second feature film from Japanese director Kei Chika-ura, is receiving its world premiere in Toronto International Film Festival’s Platform section.

Inspired by Kei’s real-life experiences, the film tells the story of an actor living in Tokyo who is forced to travel home when the police call to say his father is suffering from dementia and has lost touch with reality. Making matters worse, his father’s second wife appears to be missing.

The actor makes the trip home with his own wife, full of conflicted emotions over a man who left the family when he was still a child, and starts an exploration into the mysteries of his father’s life. Along the way, the film touches on themes including time and memory, familial obligation and the role that women play in male-dominated Japanese society.

Veteran actor Tatsuya Fuji (In The Realm Of The Senses) plays the father,...

Stars: Rinka Otani, Anna Yamada, Mayu Yamaguch, Fuju Kamio, Haruka Kudo, Hideko Hara, Yumi Adachi | Written by Takashi Shimizu, Daisuke Hosaka | Directed by Takashi Shimizu

Suicide Forest Village is the latest film from Takashi Shimizu, best known as the writer and director of The Grudge, both the original Japanese film and its US remake. But he has contributed a lot more to the genre both before and since. That includes an episode in another popular franchise, Tomie: Re-birth as well as Flight 7500 and Howling Village.

YouTuber Akina (Rinka Otani) livestreamed her trip into Aokigahara, the so-called Suicide Forest to prove that you can enter it and leave again. Needless to say things don’t go as planned. Hibiki watches it, both horrified and fascinated by what she sees.

The next day while she and her sister Mei (Mayu Yamaguch; Last Ninja-Red Shadow) are helping Akira and Miyu move they...

A death by suicide is one of the hardest things to process as it sums the excruciating pain of losing someone dear, to the guilt and regret of not having done enough to stop it. Someone may think a lie is a temporary patch. Some would express their feelings in a film. Director Katsumi Nojiri has scripted and directed “Lying to Mom”, a film sadly based on the experience of his own brother’s suicide and he has bravely injected it with a gentle humour.

“Lying to Mom” is screening at Nippon Connection

Shockingly, the film opens straight with the suicide of Koichi (Ryo Kase). After a last gaze from his window to the suburban Tokyo landscape, he hangs himself in his room. Even more disturbing is that his mother Yuko (Hideko Hara) is cheerfully cooking while watching a comedy show just a floor below. But Koichi was a hikikomori...

1996 came the all time classic from Japan "Shall We Dance?" That was inspired by the classic dance scene from the 50s movie "Anna and the King" but also gave inspiration to the Richard Ghere movie with the same title.    Story: Shohei Sugiyama (Koji Yakusho) is an successful account, married with beautiful Masako Sugiyama (Hideko Hara) and has a beautiful daughter Chikage Sugiyama (played by Ayano Nakamura). Despite a good home and a nice family, Shohei is still unhappy, he has no hobbies, and often prefer to be lonley. One day he see another lonely woman staring outside her window. Who is she? And why do all the people who visit her look happy and dancing? One of them is his boss Tomio Aoki...

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