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“Your Lovely Smile” is a rather weird film. Despite being Lim Kah-wai's work, the style essentially follows Hirobumi Watanabe's low-budget, self-starring, self-deprecating, ironic and realistic approach to cinema, with the former's hand mostly showing in the fact that the movie is in color and follows a road-film path, although the last part also appears occasionally in the latter's titles.

on Terracotta by clicking on the image below

Watanabe actually stars as himself here, playing a filmmaker who, despite having won a number of awards from festivals in Japan, finds himself once more facing the harsh realities of independent filmmaking, which seem to have grown even worse after the pandemic. As the story begins, he is stranded in his hometown doing odd jobs to make a living and pass the time essentially, occasionally meeting people from the industry with similar troubles. Eventually an opportunity for a new movie appears,...

Your Lovely Smile will be available on Blu-ray from 12th August. To celebrate we have a 3 blu-Rays to give away to 3 lucky winners!

Writen and Directed by Kah-Wai Lim, Your Lovely Smile is A bittersweet, hilarious, enlightening and inspirational road trip through Japanese arthouse cinemas with independent filmmaker Hirobumi Watanabe, who also struggles to release his own movies in real life.

This delightful minimalist micro-budget dramedy ironically and truthfully depicts a sorrowful post-Covid situation in Japanese cinemas, the rapidly changing film culture and the newly (re)discovered habits of spectators as an unyielding optimist Hirobumi painstakingly and stubbornly strives to invent clever distribution methods while keeping on striving to make movies.

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The Small Print

This competition is open to UK residents only The competition will close 19th August 2024 at 23.59 GMT The winner(s) will be picked at random from entries received No cash alternative to the prizes...

Over the years, Nippon Connection in Frankfurt, Germany has become a fixed event in the calendar of Asian movie enthusiasts and critics alike. The motto of this year's edition was “Crossing Borders” offering a multitude of long and short features as well as documentaries fulfilling category either thematically and/or aesthetically, ensuring visitors will see the many facets of Japanese cinema ranging from big productions such as Takeshi Kitano's “Kubi”, feel-good cinema like Ryoma Kosasa's “Push Pause” to coming-of-age drama such as Ren Sudo's “Abyss” or modern horror dramas such as Yuta Shimotsu's “Best Wishes to All”. In the documentary category we went into the depth within the world of J-horror with “The J-Horror Virus”, directed by Jaspar Sharp and Sarah Appleton, and looked at the state of Japanese society with works like “Johatsu” or “What Should We Have Done?”. Along with its program containing serving Japanese dishes,...

It is evident in the cultural landscape of many countries, that we are facing a decimation of diversity in favor of a more universal product in the film industry. While, for example, streaming services provide a great variety of features, the lack of curation and also lack of quality at times lead to the question of whether it is more about content and less so about the product itself. Theaters, especially smaller ones, have often taken on the production which would not fit within the mainstream cineplexes, sometimes accompanied by proper curation, and even small film festivals, providing a great opportunity for new perspectives and approaches. In his documentary, Lim Kah-wai (”Your Lovely Smile”) takes a look at “mini theaters”, small cinemas with often just one screen, their history and significance within Japan's cultural landscape and also their ways to survive in this new era of entertainment.

This Magic Moment...

Malaysia-born drector Lim Kah Wai’s “New World” reflects its creator’s nomadic life, split between studying and living in Osaka, Beijing and Tokyo. The film is in fact an unusual mix of Chinese and Japanese characters whose lives intersect and connect on a evolving backdrop.

on CathayPlay

Coco (Shi Ka) is a modern Chinese girl, living an easy life in Beijing, cocooned in her world of friends and shopping and chaperoned around by the driver of her wealthy and workaholic boyfriend. It’s almost Christmas (not surprisingly a Western and consumerist holiday) and bored Coco is dreaming of spending the holidays in Japan, the glamorous destination of her dreams, but it looks like her boyfriend will not be able to join her, and after an altercation, she decides to go on her own. Coco has a friend who is studying in Osaka and asks her to...

Titles include Kah Wai Lim’s Japanese feature ‘Everything, Everywhere’.

Eight features will have world premieres in the Rebels With A Cause strand of Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival (Poff), including new films from Kah Wai Lim and Matias Rojas Valencia.

The competitive section includes 11 features, with two further films playing out of competition.

Scroll down for the full Rebels With A Cause selection

Japanese director Lim presents Everything, Everywhere, a semi-improvised road movie set in the Balkans where Lim typically films, in which Japanese star Shogen plays a fictionalized version of the director.

Lim’s previous films include 2022 comedy-drama...

Getting In Front Of The Competition

The International Olympic Committee said on Thursday that Swiss-based, Chinese-owned Infront Sports & Media would handle broadcast right sales in much of Asia for the next series of Summer and Winter games.

The deal covers 22 territories including Afghanistan, Brunei, Cambodia, Chinese Taipei, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Singapore, Tajikistan, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Vietnam – but not China, Japan or South Korea, and runs 2026-2032. That means it will cover the Milan-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics and the Los Angeles 2028 and Brisbane 2032 Summer games. The 2030 Winter Olympics, which have yet to be allocated a host, and all Youth Olympic Games during this period will also be covered.

Infront, which is headed by Philippe Blatter and has been owned by China’s Dalian Wanda since 2015, replaces the Japanese advertising and marketing giant Dentsu, which had handled the rights...

After six day, with around 100 features being screened, 100 guests and 60 events surrounding the festival, the 23rd edition of Nippon Connection came to an end on Sunday the 11th of June with its award ceremony. Actress and singer Toko Miura was honored with the Nippon Rising Star Award for her roles in features such as “Drive My Car”, “Mountain Woman” and “Our Huff And Puff Journey”.

The Nippon Visions Jury Award was given to Kah Wai Lim's road-movie “Your Lovely Smile”. According to the jury, the feature's message, the performances and the passions of the characters made it very clear this is a movie which deserves the honor.

Kah Wai Lim at the award ceremony

However, the audience also gave in its vote, with the prestigious Nippon Cinema Award going to Masayuki Suzuki's “Yudo”. The Nippon Docs Award was given to “My Anniversaries” by Sungwoong Kim and, finally, the...

by Filippo Recaneschi

Festivals are a must-have for every cinephile. That is more than true if you love Asian cinema, since almost only major titles get to be seen outside Asia. In the last 25 years, Far East Film Festival (Feff), held in Udine, Italy, has provided a catering of such movies for western audiences. In its 25th edition, held from 21st to 29th of April, Feff provided a unique selection of Asian movies and a variety of Asian-related events. The selection varied from works from first-feature directors as well as well-navigated ones, ranging from genre movies to arthouse independent movies.

It is impossible to talk about this year’s festival without mentioning Hirobumi Watanabe, which participated as both director and actor. One of his films is “Techno Brothers” (2023) a quirky road movie about two brothers making techno music and their cynical agent Himuro (Asuna Yanagi). The plot revolves around their...

“Your Lovely Smile” is a rather weird film. Despite the fact that is Lim Kah-wai's work, the style essentially follows Hirobumi Watanabe's low-budget, self-starring, self-deprecating, ironic and realistic approach to cinema, with the former's hand mostly showing in the fact that the movie is in color and follows a road-film path, although the last part also appears occasionally in the latter's titles.

“Your Lovely Smile” is screening at Udine Far East Film Festival

Watanabe actually stars as himself here, playing a filmmaker who, despite having won a number of awards from festivals in Japan, finds himself once more facing the harsh realities of independent filmmaking, which seem to have grown even worse after the pandemic. As the story begins, he is stranded in his hometown doing odd jobs to make a living and pass the time essentially, occasionally meeting people from the industry with similar troubles. Eventually an...

Never mind the Blues-, here are the Techno Brothers, and they are ready to conquer Japan. The music band in the film pronounced as a trio of geniuses on a par with Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, The Beatles, Miles Davis and Bob Dylan by their agent Himuro (Asuna Yanagi), consists of real life Watanabe brothers (Hirobumi and Yuji) and Kurosaki Takanori, dressed up as if they came out of the Kraftwerk impersonators' competition. In case anyone wonders, yes – they are dressed in the signature red shirts and black ties, and they perform long electronic numbers in the most unlikely of places such as a recreation park and a green house to a very small, mostly unwilling audience.

“Techno Brothers” is screening at Udine Far East Film Festival

There are evident film influences from the 1990s in the “Techno Brothers”, from Jim Jarmusch's “Stranger Than Paradise”, the above indicated Jon Landis musical hit,...

Udine Far East Film Festival is back with a record line-up to celebrate its 25th edition. 78 films, 14 countries, 9 world premieres – Golden Mulberry for Lifetime Achievement to Baisho Chieko – On the red carpet also Johnnie To, Watanabe Hirobumi and Jang Sun-woo.

If there are 78 films (record number!) and they come from 14 countries, it should certainly be emphasized that the line-up includes 15 women directors and 12 newcomers. In brief, the 2023 selection aims to restore great complexity more than ever of Asia. A selection that combines the recent past with today, seamlessly, among different communities, different expectations and choices of life, languages and dialects, politics, religions, habits, inclinations, beliefs, myths and legends and, last but not least, different gender identities. A selection that tells in real time how the cinematography of East and Southeast Asia have re-emerged from the sad period of the pandemic, not all in the same way, and not all with the same results.

“Your Lovely Smile” is a rather weird film. Despite the fact that is Lim Kah-wai’s work, the style essentially follows Hirobumi Watanabe’s low-budget, self-starring, self-deprecating, ironic and realistic approach to cinema, with the former’s hand mostly showing in the fact that the movie is in color and follows a road-film path, although the last part also appears occasionally in the latter’s titles.

Watanabe actually stars as himself here, playing a filmmaker who, despite having won a number of awards from festivals in Japan, finds himself once more facing the harsh realities of independent filmmaking, which seem to have grown even worse after the pandemic. As the story begins, he is stranded in his hometown doing odd jobs to make a living and pass the time essentially, occasionally meeting people from the industry with similar troubles. Eventually an opportunity for a new movie appears,...

Tallinn Black Nights film festival kicked off on November 11th, but the screenings of films from all five competition segments – Official Selection, First Feature Competition, Baltic Film Competition, Rebels With a Cause and Critics’ Picks- have just begun.

Five titles from Asia compete in the Official Selection. Vietnamese director Dung Luon Dinh is in Tallinn with his martial arts rich thriller “Magnum 578”, Israeli director Shahar Rozen competes with “Ducks – An Urban Legend”, a comedy thriller that involves yellow rubber ducks, and a year after his sophomore film “Make the Devil Laugh” had its world premiere here in Tallinn, the Japanese director Ryuchi Mino is back in town with a period comedy “Ginji The Speculator”. Indian director Sudhansu Saria, whose debut feature film “Loev” competed at PÖFF in 2015, is back with “Sanaa”, a drama starring Pooja Bhatt and Sohum Shah. Iranian title “The Wastetown” directed by Ahmad Bahrami is also...

Tidepoint Pictures and Spectacle Theater Present

Cross-cultural film director Lim Kah Wai live Q&A

Fly Me To Minami, Magic & Loss, and After All These Years to play at Brooklyn, NY’s Spectacle Theater this December

Brooklyn-based microcinema Spectacle Theater and longtime Asian film distributor Tidepoint Pictures team up to bring three of Lim Kah Wai films to New York this December.

Malaysia-born Lim Kah-Wai spent 6 years as a network engineer in Tokyo, Japan. He left this career to study film at Beijing Film Academy. His first film, After All These Years, was shot in China; his last 2 films shot in Osaka, Japan, featuring Chinese, Hong Kong and Korean actress with Japanese casts. Lim realistically blends cross-cultural elements, story and subject in his films.

The series kicks off December 9th at 7:30p with Lim Kah-Wai introducing Magic And Loss in person, followed by another live Q&A December 10th...

Taksu, the second feature by actress, producer, and now director Sugino Kiki, takes its title from the Balinese concept (often associated with dance) of artistry and charisma that taps into divine, spiritual power. And though it may be going too far to say that this is what Sugino achieves with this film, the artistic ambitiousness of her efforts are very clear, and she comes up with beautiful and mesmerizing results.Sugino, named "Muse of the Asian Indie Cinema" at the 2011 Tokyo International Film Festival, has been a frequent fixture on the festival circuit in the past few years, working with filmmakers such as Fukada Koji (Hospitalite, Au Revoir L'ete), Lim Kah Wai (Magic and Loss), Uchida Nobuteru (Odayaka), and Edmund Yeo (the short Exhalation), and...

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