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Exclusive: North America’s largest festival of contemporary Japanese cinema, Japan Cuts, has selected 30 features and 12 shorts for a 2020 edition that will take place entirely online due to continued corona disruption.

Running July 17-30, the traditionally New York-based event will instead be available across the country via a digital platform set up in partnership with Festival Scope and Shift72. Films will be made available to rent with a limited number or virtual tickets per title, priced at $2–$7 with discounted bundles.

Alongside screenings, there will also be virtual Q&As, discussion panels, and video introductions from filmmakers in a bid to maintain the festival’s sense of community and dedication to intercultural communication.

The fest will kick off with a live virtual Q&a with Shinichiro Ueda, director of opening film selection Special Actors, the follow-up to Ueda’s popular breakout debut One Cut of the Dead. The festival’s Centerpiece...

Kaori Sakagami was born in Osaka in 1965, and studied at the University of Pittsburgh. After returning to Japan, she started working as a director for numerous TV documentaries. Since 2001, she has been a Visiting Associate Professor at Hitotsubashi University. Her first feature length documentary Lifers: Reaching For Life Beyond The Walls (2004) was awarded at New York International Independent Film and Video Festival, while her following film Talk Back Out Loud (2013) was shown at various international film festivals. In her books as well as in her films, she often deals with therapeutic approaches toward experiences of violence.

On the occasion of her latest film, “Prison Circle” Screening at Nippon Connection, we speak with her about the penal system, Shimane Asahi Rehabilitation Program Center, Tc program, various inmates, the whether one is born or becomes a criminal, and many other topics.

You shot two documentaries about the penal system in the Us...

There are some films that are very difficult to review, because their importance outshines their level of quality. Kaori Sakagami, who has previously made two films about the Us penal system and spent six years trying to obtain permission to shoot inside a Japanese prison, presents a documentary that is just that: very important.

“Prison Circle” is screening at Nippon Connection 2020

The prison that eventually gave her permission is the Shimane Asahi Rehabilitation Program Center, a facility that fosters mostly first-time offenders, and is run by a collaboration of the state with private companies. The unique aspect of the prison however, is the Therapeutic Circle (Tc) program, where a group of inmates fulfilling specific criteria participate in sessions that focus on mutual-self treatment to support each other. At the same time, the program asks them to confront themselves, their past, and the reasons that led them to crime, in an...