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A distribution hub for Japanese independent films Sakka is set to distribute “Ken and Kazu” which originally premiered in 2015 at Tokyo International Film Festival where the film won Best Picture in Japanese Cinema Splash. Directed by Hiroshi Shoji, this refreshing and gripping Japanese noir was invited to Edinburgh International Film Festival, Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival, Japan Cuts, and many more.

This will be the film's first ever overseas release despite being enthusiastically embraced by film fans around the world when it premiered. It will come to Sakka in August, and will be available to stream worldwide excluding Japan.

“This is my first feature film.” The director Shoji sent a special message to the Sakka audience. “It was shot in 2013, released in 2016, and traveled to many film festivals overseas. I am extremely grateful that the film will be released on Sakka and can be seen by audience overseas again 10 years after we shot it.

As we have mentioned many times before, films about films are one of the new trends of Asian cinema, with the Japanese movie industry in particular being quite active in the category. It is also interesting that local productions deal with film workers very rarely mentioned anywhere in essence, with “Extro” focusing on extras and “Uzumasa Limelight” on a stuntman. Ryo Katayama's “Unknown” also moves down the same path, by dealing with bit actors who try to survive while keeping their passion for acting alive.

“Unknown” review is part of the Submit Your Film Initiative

40-year-old Kihara is one of those actors who has just been casted to play a secondary role in a violent movie, since the director, Sato, values his acting, despite the fact that he did not pick him in the previous audition he participated in for him. Kiharai is really happy and believes that this...

It seems like the erotic industry of Japan, and partticulary its demise, is becoming a hot topic for the local industry, with “Naked Director”, “Dancing in Her Dreams” and “Dynamite Graffiti” being just few of the titles focusing on the subject and its various instances. Shoichi Yokoyama based his own film on real-life events following the 2019 decision of Japan’s three biggest convenience store chains to stop selling adult magazines, in an effort to clean up the country’s image ahead of the Olympics, by focusing on the lives of the employees of such a magazine.

“Goodbye, Bad Magazines” is screening at Hawai’i International Film Festival

The protagonist of the story, which begins a few years before 2019, is Shiori, a university grad who finds herself working in an erotic magazine, the third tier of a publishing house, despite her dreams of becoming a proper, professional writer. Starting at shredding papers,...

"Your body is the Fatherland. Don't let it fall into enemy hands." Dark Star Pictures has revealed the new official US trailer for the film Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle, a French drama about a Japanese solider that originally premiered at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival last year. Based on a true story!! Which is especially crazy when you think about it. Shot in Japanese, this international co-production tells the story of the soldier Hiroo Onoda (played by Endô Yûya) who was sent to an island in the Philippines in 1944, to fight against the American offensive. When "Japan surrenders, Onoda ignores it, trained to survive at all costs in the jungle, he keeps his war going. He will take 10,000 days to capitulate, refusing to believe the end of the Second World War." He ends up spending nearly 30 years there. The film also stars Tsuda Kanji, Matsuura Yūya, Chiba Tetsuya, Katō Shinsuke,...

The end of WWII for Japan, and particularly the fact that some of its soldiers refused or did not received the order to surrender has been one of the most dramatic episodes in the country’s history, with Kazuo Hara’s “The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On” being one of the most impactful presentations of the concept in cinema. Arthur Harari moves in the same path, choosing to base his movie on the life of Hiroo Onoda, an Imperial Japanese Army intelligence officer who did not surrender at the war’s end in August 1945, but spent 29 years hiding in the Philippines until his former commander traveled from Japan to formally relieve him from duty by order of Emperor Showa in 1974. “Onoda” opened Cannes’ “Un Certain Regard” section in July 2021.

on Terracotta

The story unfolds in two intermingling time frames, as it starts with Onoda’s arrival in Lubang,...

The issues caused by the ever increasing elderly population of Japan have been examined by a number of filmmakers, particularly during the recent years. Yusuke Okuda, drawing from his personal experiences, also tries his hand in the particular theme, through an approach, however, that is quite different than the usual ones, especially due to the restraint it exhibits.

“Somebody’s Flowers” is available from Article Films

Takaaki is a lonely iron shop welder who is still recovering from the loss of his brother, with his way of coping including regular visits to a support group and talking to a colleague during work, who cannot actually hear him though. At the same time, his father suffers from dementia, constantly confusing him with his older brother, while Takaaki is not willing to help his mother with his care in any significant way, with the only assistance she receives being from Satomi, a caretaker.

No man is an island, but for 29 years, until his final surrender in 1974, Hiroo Onoda came as close as any man could. Leading an ever-dwindling band of Japanese holdouts who refused to believe their nation had lost the war, Onoda continued to carry out minor guerrilla attacks on the residents of the small Philippine island of Lubang for almost three decades, until it was just him left, hiding in the underbrush, subsisting on a diet of zealotry and whatever he could scavenge or steal.

It’s a famous, fabulously knotty, semi-surreal story, fraught with allegorical potential, but despite some length and pacing issues, it is somewhat surprisingly made, by French director Arthur Harari, into a potent, satisfying saga of old-school, muscular filmmaking. Part John Ford, part Sam Fuller, the film’s old-fashioned approach is oddly impressive: To tell this kind of story in such blunt-edged, straightforward style is a distinctive...

In a style that reminded me much of Kitano’s “Kids Return,” in its disillusioned portrayal of the lives of Yakuza, Hiroshi Shoji presents a truly punk film that continues the currently lost legacy of the Japanese master.

Ken and Kazu are two lowlifes who use the failing car repair shop of the latter to deal meth, with the assistance of a simpleton named Teru, who also helps at the shop. Both of them have a good reason behind their actions, since Ken’s girlfriend is pregnant and he needs money to support her and the baby, and Kazu has to put his senile mother in an elderly house.

In this line of work, they actually work for Todo, a former classmate who is the yakuza in charge of the area, and whose enforcer is a brute named Tagami, who matches the archetype of the Yakuza henchman in all aspects.