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The London East Asia Film Festival (Leaff) celebrates its sixth edition in 2021 with a commitment to diverse, culturally impactful cinema entertainment. After a year of shut cinema doors, Leaff is returning home to London’s big screens with an expanded catalogue to help stimulate the renaissance of cinema and promote cultural empathy.

With cinematic offerings from eight regions – China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam – this year’s programme is an ode to the quiet and independent voices from East Asia. Two international premieres, five European premieres and 18 UK premieres will take place at our state-art-of-the-art venues, Odeon Luxe Leicester Square, The Cinema at Selfridges, as well as the newly opened Odeon Luxe West End and The Chiswick Cinema. The festival is divided into five strands: Official Selection, Competition, Hong Kong Focus, Documentary, and Retrospective.

Opening Gala

The festival opens with a memorial to the late Benny Chan...

Films shot in Japan by foreigners have given us a number of notable features during the recent years, with the works of Anshul Chauhan and Ian Thomas Ash being the first that come to mind. Philippe McKie, a Canadian who has been living and working in Japan for the past ten years in the fashion industry, as a DJ in Tokyo clubs, and as a filmmaker, has also come up with his own feature, focusing on the underground dance scene that seems to be rather vibrant nowadays in the country, in a film that managed to find distribution in Japan, even amidst the pandemic.

“Dreams on Fire” is screening at Fantasia International Film Festival

After watching a dance performance in the theater as a teenager, Yume has only one dream, to become a professional dancer in Tokyo. Against her father’s wishes (played in a rather ironic fashion by legendary...

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...

The 80-minutes documentary by American filmmaker Ian Thomas Ash shows the daily routine of Dr. Kaoru Konta and her team of nurses as they provide hospice care to their elderly patients.

“Sending Off” is screening at Camera Japan 2019

The director starts without any hesitation. We are thrown into a situation where the nurses pay a visit to a dying woman. Uncommented and with a silent distance, the camera focuses on the relationship between patients and nurse. In the tradition of Kazuo Hara and his observational style, Ash leaves us completely alone with his images. Long shots support the meditative and calm spirit that the nurses radiate during their work.

“Sending Off” operates on two different levels. First, it satisfies the curiosity of the foreigner viewer, who is confronted with the widely unknown customs of the Japanese people in the field of elderly care and burial habits. Second, the movie takes away the fear of death.

The third edition of the Japannual Film Festival takes place from 1st to 6th of October in Vienna. This year, the festival celebrates the 150th anniversary of Austrian-Japanese diplomatic relations with an excellent selection of films, showing the highlights of the bygone year. Besides the modern cinema, Japannual features two movies of the infamous director Koji Wakamatsu accompanied by the short films of video artist Yuri Muraoka.

The opening film “Blue Hour” (2019), a multi-layered comedy about a sudden family visit, is the first feature by female director Yuko Hakota and was already celebrated at the Nippon Connection Festival for its portrayal of strong female characters.

Strong female characters can also be seen in Kosai Sekine’s “Love at Least” (2018) and Momoko Fukuda’s “My Father, My Bride” (2019). Both directors will be present at the festival and so it the actress Shuri, who gives an intriguing performance of a mentally ill...

Camera Japan Festival has just announced this year’s full programme. The festival will be held in Rotterdam (LantarenVenster & Worm) from the 25th to the 29th of September, before moving to Kriterion in Amsterdam (from the 3rd to the 6th of October). Besides offering a rich variety of Japanese films, the festival also includes several cultural and culinary workshops, two photo exhibitions, a Camera Japan quiz and the yearly film brunch.

Film programme Camera Japan

The 14th edition of the Camera Japan Festival will open with the international premiere of “Little Miss Period” by Shinada Shunsuke. Other highlights of the 2019 selection are “Vision”, by the renowned filmmaker Kawase Naomi, “Jam” by Sabu and Melancholic, the prize-winning debut of Tanaka Seiji. The programme also includes a special screening of the classic 1932 silent film “I Was Born But…” by Ozu Yasujiro, which will be accompanied by a Live soundtrack. Anime fans can...

We present the winners of the 7th Dmz International Documentary Film Festival that took place from the 17th to the 24th of September.

This annual festival is organized jointly by the cities of Goyung and Paju, from the Gyeonggi Province, in a buffer zone called the Korean Demilitarized Zone (Dmz). The festival aims to present documentaries with the theme of peace, reconciliation, coexistence and to promote the documentary genre as a means of communication.

International Competition

White Goose Award

Homeland – Abbas Fahdel – Iraq, France | 2015 – 334 minutes

Special Jury Award

28 Nights and a Poem – Akram Zaatari – Lebanon, France | 2015 – 105 minutes

Asian Competition

Asian Perspective Award

-1287 – Ian Thomas Ash – Japan | 2014 – 70 minutes

Korean Competition

Best Korean Documentary Award

The Letter – Lee Hyun-jun – South Korea | 2014 – 16 minutes

Korean Special Jury Award

Troublers – Lee Young – South Korea | 2015 – 98 minutes

Brave New Docs Award

Thirty-four, On the Road – Kim Byung-chul, Lee Sun-hee – South Korea | 2015 – 84 minutes

Youth Competition

Best...

Third Window Films are pleased to have taken on board a big chunk of programming of the Way Out East Strand of the 21st Raindance Film Festival, one of the largest independent film festivals in the world. This year's festival will have a special focus on Japanese independent cinema with a strand called Way Out East featuring 13 films, of which 7 were programmed by the guys at Third Window Films. There will be UK premiers of its latest acquisitions: Sake-bomb and Shady, plus they will also be bringing over 5 directors from Japan to represent their latest works, so Raindance is the place to be in the UK for catching the latest and best independent cinema from Japan. Other highlights include, the world premieres of Court of Zues, with Q&A from director Gen Takahashi (Confessions of a Dog), The Kirishima Thing with Q&A from director Daihachi Yoshida (Funuke), A2-B-c...

WikiLeaks founder to judge films at the 21st Raindance Film Festival; 2013 line-up unveiled.Scroll down for full line-up of films

Julian Assange has joined the jury of the 21st Raindance Film Festival (Sept 25 - Oct 6), a London-based event that celebrates independent film in the UK and around the world.

The appointment is a controversial one. The Australian editor-in-chief and founder of WikiLeaks took refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy in London in June 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning about sexual assault allegations.

It is understood that he fears Sweden would extradite him to the Us, where he believes he is wanted in relation to WikiLeaks’ disclosure of a significant amount of classified Us military and diplomatic documents.

Commenting on Assange’s appointment, Raindance founder Elliot Grove said: “Every year Raindance invites interesting people to join our jury. In the past we have had musicians like Mick Jones, Marky Ramone and [link...