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Exus, Honda, Subaru, Microsoft, Shiseido, Canon, Cisco, and others, Kazunori Miura has worked across various industries before making his directorial debut with the short “Scenario.” The movie earned Best Actress at the Ashiya International Art & Film Festival and the Grand Prix at the Wakayama Kisssh-Kissssssh Film Festival. It is also screening at Nippon Connection.

Scenario is screening at Nippon Connection

“Scenario” begins with messages popping up on a smartphone, where a woman asks someone about breakfast before she starts preparing scrambled eggs. After finishing, a man appears. The two, Misato and Satoshi Kodama, begin eating, and a conversation emerges about what they should do that day. It becomes clear that both the question about breakfast and the day’s plan were posed to the titular A.I.

The story then shows the couple learning that Misato is pregnant. We see them expressing joy and gratitude toward God. Around that time,...

The world premiere of Takeshi Kushida’s Acting For Beginners has been set as the opening film of Japan’s Skip City International D-Cinema Festival (July 13-21), which has also revealed its international and Japanese competition titles.

It marks a return to the festival for Japanese filmmaker Kushida, whose psychological thriller My Mother’s Eyes premiered in competition at Skip City last year, having won the festival’s top award in 2020 with Woman Of The Photographs.

Kushida’s latest centres on a man who moves between dreams and reality against the backdrop of an abandoned factory where time seems to have stopped.

Skip City International D-Cinema Festival which started in 2004 in Kawaguchi City, Saitama Prefecture, has been held every year as a “gateway for emerging talent” centered on the International Competition and the Japanese Film Competition (features and shorts). The festival launched the careers of Kazuya Shiraishi (Lesson in Murder), Ryota Nakano (The Asadas), Shinichiro Ueda (One Cut of the Dead), Shinzo Katayama (Missing) and many other directors who are leading the Japanese film industry as top runners and whose new movies audiences are looking forward to seeing.

The 21st edition will be held both at theaters and online as a hybrid festival again.

On Friday, June 7th, we held a press conference to announce the full line-up consisting of the titles of the whole line-up. This year's festival will open with Acting for Beginners, directed by Takeshi Kushida, who won the 2020 Skip City Award for Woman of the Photographs, the nomination...