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“Cloud,” the action thriller from director Kiyoshi Kurosawa that was Japan’s official submission for the 97th Oscars, has been acquired for North American release by Sideshow and Janus Films, IndieWire has learned exclusively.

“Cloud” made its world premiere out of competition at Venice in 2024 and also played Toronto, Fantastic Fest, Beyond Fest, the Busan International Film Festival, and many more. The film failed to make the cut for the Best International Feature shortlist at the Oscars this year, but the title was widely acclaimed and will now be released theatrically in summer 2025. In fact, IndieWire listed it among the year’s Best Undistributed Films.

“Cloud” stars Masaki Suda as a sleazy online reseller of junk and fake goods who is obsessed with making a profit and the thrill of making money in real time. But after turning down a promotion at his day job, he’s approached with a...

Nikkatsu, the venerable Japanese studio which is representing “Cloud,” the latest film by Kurosawa Kiyoshi, has added a quartet of new titles to its sales lineup, in time for Tiffcom the rights market that accompanies the Tokyo International Film Festival.

These are headed by “The Hotel of My Dreams,” a comedy-drama directed by Tsutsumi Yukihiko. It stars the acclaimed Non as a woman who may be the unluckiest debut novelist in the world. After a promising and award-winning start to her career, Kayoko is derailed by brutal criticism from a more established writer. After the two find themselves in the same hotel, Kayako seeks to sabotage her rival’s publication. But that further showdowns follow. The film is set to release in Japanese theaters on Dec. 27.

“Kaiju Guy,” directed by Yagi Junichiro, is targeting a January 2025 release and is intended to bring geeky cheer to the winter months. The comedy-action...

Writer-director Kiyoshi Kurosawa returns with this movie, “Cloud,” along with his 50-minuter horror-thriller revisionist “Chime” and the French remake of “Serpent’s Path” to treat the audiences waiting for him for four years since his period-thriller, “Wife of a Spy.” Genre-bending may be a good cinephiliac way to describe “Cloud”, but what Kurosawa achieves in this movie is not to merely bend and shift, but to stack genres one after the other. Or more accurately, to chain genres, in a way that his treatment goes back and forth after each one.

Cloud is screening at Hawai’i International Film Festival

Similar to the decision to have “Chime” run at merely short of an hour, the genre-chain is gutsy, risky, and at times imbalanced. But it is tricky over all: are we to trust Mr. Kurosawa because he is Mr. Kurosawa to treat his film in this way and not fail? But...

Japanese filmmaker Kiyoshi Kurosawa, this year’s Asian Filmmaker of the Year at Busan International Film Festival, talked about the two films he has playing here, as well as the recent wave of young talent emerging in Japan, during a press event on the second day of the festival.

Mentioning that he turns 69 years old this year, Kurosawa said he decided to churn out two films in a short space of time – Cloud, starring Masaki Suda as a factory worker with a dubious online side hustle, and Serpent’s Path 2024, a French-language remake of his 1998 Japanese film of the same name. Both films are screening as Galas in Busan after Cloud premiered at Venice film festival and Serpent’s Path in San Sebastian.

“It wasn’t my intention, but when I received an invitation from a French producer to remake one of my films in France, I chose Serpent’s Path without hesitation,...

The 29th edition of the Busan International Film Festival opened Wednesday night with top stars like Lee Jung-jae (Squid Game), Song Joong-ki (Descendants of the Sun) and Gang Dong-won (Peninsula) walking the red carpet under the towering dome of the Busan Cinema Center, in front of more than 4,500 guests.

With a new leadership team headed by chairman and veteran filmmaker Park Kwang-su as well as Ellen Y.D. Kim, the festival awarded the Asian Filmmaker of the Year honors to Japanese auteur Kiyoshi Kurosawa. Kurosawa won Venice’s Silver Lion for best director in 2020 with Wife of a Spy.

The festival’s congratulatory video for Kurosawa featured praises from fellow Japanese director Ryusuke Hamaguchi and Korean director Bong Joon-ho — both sharing how Kurosawa’s works inspired their own cinematic craft.

In his speech onstage, Kurosawa acknowledged how Biff has provided a platform for many of his works, saying that the...

The opening night of the 29th Busan International Film Festival (Biff) saw a starry audience of more than 4,500 guests in fits of laughter as well as reduced to tears at a ceremony tonight (October 3).

Staged under the illuminated roof of the Busan Cinema Center in South Korea, directors, actors and producers from more than 70 films in Biff’s official selection walked the red carpet, including Thai star Billkin from blockbuster How To Make Millions Before Grandma Dies, India’s Banita Das from Village Rockstars 2 and Filipino director Brillante Mendoza. Squid Game star Lee Jung-jae was also in attendance as well as Portuguese filmmaker Miguel Gomes,...

The 2024 Venice Film Festival kicked off August 28 with the long-awaited Tim Burton-Michael Keaton sequel Beetlejuice Beetlejuice opening the 81th edition, which runs through September 7 on the Lido. Deadline is on the ground to watch all the key films.

The lineup for the world’s oldest fest also includes world premieres of Todd Phillips’ Joaquin Phoenix-Lady Gaga pic Joker: Folie à Deux, Pedro Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door, Luca Guadagnino’s Queer, Pablo Larrain’s Maria Callas biopic Maria starring Angelina Jolie and new works from the likes of Alfonso Cuarón, Walter Salles, Harmony Korine, Thomas Vinterberg, Brady Corbet, Takeshi Kitano, Claude Lelouch, Errol Morris and others.

Below is a compilation of our reviews from the fest, which last year awarded its Golden Lion for best film to Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things, starring Emma Stone, who went on the win the Best Actress Oscar. Isabelle Huppert heads the competition jury this year.

Entries for the 2025 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.

The 97th Academy Awards is set to take place on March 3, 2025 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.

An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture (over 40 minutes) produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50%) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.

Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between November 1, 2023, and September 30, 2024. The deadline for submissions to the Academy is October 2.

A shortlist of 15 finalists is scheduled to...

The last time the journeyman Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa was at the Venice Film Festival, he took home the event’s prestigious best director award for his period drama Wife of a Spy. He is back in the Italian festival’s main competition this week with Cloud, the first action film of his expansive and acclaimed filmography. The film received a boost on Friday morning ahead of its world premiere on the Lido, as news arrived in Venice that Japan had selected Cloud as its official entry to the Oscars’ best international film race.

The film tells the story of Ryōsuke Yoshii (Masaki Suda in a star-making performance), a worker at a small factory who makes money on the side as an online reseller of random goods — medical devices, handbags, collectible figurines — anything he can flip for a quick profit. Gradually, Yoshii begins shunning those around him — an old friend...

Yoshii (Masaki Suda) sells stuff. Any stuff, as long as it’s piled high — in a digital sense — and selling cheap, but not nearly as cheap as what he paid for it. The first thing we see him buy is a pile of “miracle therapy machines” at a knockdown price casually extorted from the people who claim to make them. Who buys this garbage? Who cares? Yoshii is full of the bravado of a gambler on a winning streak. He has no idea whether he is buying fake designer goods, he tells another “reseller,” which is the name of his game. The point is to move things on before you find out.

Except that some people do find out they have been cheated. Among them, there are even people as web-smart as Yoshii himself. They will find out who he really is, behind his internet handle Ratel. And when they find out,...

Japan has picked Kurosawa Kiyoshi’s Cloud as the country’s submission for Best International Feature Film at the 97th Oscars.

The film will premiere out of competition at the Venice Film Festival this week.

Starring Masaki Suda, Cloud is a thriller that follows a young man named Yoshii who resells goods online and ends up triggering a series of mysterious events, blurring the boundaries between the online and offline worlds.

Cloud is produced by Nikkatsu Corporation and Tokyo Theatres Company. With Nikkatsu handling world sales, the feature has been acquired for France (Art House Films), Spain (A Contracorriente Films), Italy (Minerva Pictures) and Taiwan (Sky Digi Entertainment) so far.

Previously, Kurosawa previously won the festival’s Silver Lion for best director with Wife of a Spy in 2020. He has also won the Un Certain Regard jury prize at Cannes for Tokyo Sonata in 2008, as well as the Un Certain...

Entries for the 2025 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.

The 97th Academy Awards is set to take place on March 3, 2025 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.

An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture (over 40 minutes) produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50%) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.

Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between November 1, 2023, and September 30, 2024. The deadline for submissions to the Academy is October 2.

A shortlist of 15 finalists is scheduled to...

Kurosawa Kiyoshi’s thriller “Cloud,” which has its world premiere in an out-of-competition berth at Venice Film Festival, is debuting its trailer (below). International sales are being handled by Nikkatsu, and Minerva has picked up Italian distribution rights.

Kurosawa’s festival trophies include the Cannes Un Certain Regard jury prize for “Tokyo Sonata” (2008), the Un Certain Regard award for best director for “Journey to the Shore” (2015), and Venice’s Silver Lion for best director for “Wife of a Spy” (2020).

Hunting for a subject for an action film six years ago, Kurosawa’s attention was drawn to the online world. He says: “In the obscure corners of modern-day Japan, violent incidents sometimes occur for seemingly no reason whatsoever. When the causes are investigated, it becomes apparent that a system of sorts exists through which petty grudges and frustrations are accumulated and blown out of proportion by the internet.”

The film centers on Yoshi Ryosuke,...

Japanese sci-fi classic The Human Vapor — directed by Godzilla creator Ishirō Honda and released in 1960 — is set to receive a contemporary reimagining as a live-action series courtesy of Netflix and Toho Studios. The remake project marks the first time the global streamer and Japanese studio giant are collaborating.

The series is being co-helmed by a Korean-Japanese creative dream team. Korean filmmaker Yeon Sang-ho (Train to Busan, Hellbound, Parasyte: The Grey) is serving as the film’s executive producer and co-scriptwriter, while Japan’s Shinzo Katayama (Missing, Siblings of the Cape, Disney’s Gannibal) will direct. Japanese stars Shun Oguri (Godzilla vs. Kong) and Yu Aoi (Wife of a Spy) will co-star in the series.

The third and final film of Toho’s “Transforming Human Series” of cult sci-fi classics from the 1950s and 1960s, The Human Vapor tells the story of a man turned into a gaseous mutant by a radiation experiment gone awry.

Netflix has forged its first ever partnership with Toho, Japan’s leading film studio, to remake 1960 science fiction feature The Human Vapor.

Human Vapor will be written by Yeon Sang-ho, the South Korean filmmaker behind hit zombie thriller Train To Busan, and directed by Shinzo Katayama of Disney+ drama-horror series Gannibal and 2021 feature Missing.

While plot details remain under wraps, the original centres on the victim of a scientific experiment who can transform himself into gas and uses these powers to commit robberies and kill those who stand in his way. It was directed by Ishiro Honda and featured effects by Eiji Tsuburaya,...

You know how it is: you wait 4 years for a new Kiyoshi Kurosawa film to follow “Wife of a Spy” and then three come along in quick succession int he same year. After his remake to his own “Serpent's Path” and a short film, we now gear up for the release of his new work, “Cloud”, starring Masaki Suda.

Synopsis

Ryosuke Yoshii is an ordinary person, who supports himself by reselling things on the internet. He carelessly earns grudges by people around him and, in the end, he is dragged into a desperate struggle that risks his life.

in addition to Suda, “Cloud” stars Kotone Furukawa, Daiken Okudaira, Amane Okayama, YosiYosi Arakawa and Masataka Kubota. It is scheduled to release in Japan on September 27th, 2024.

Look out, Hong Sangsoo. Your distinction as the most prolific director working today is being challenged. It’s been nearly four years since Kiyoshi Kurosawa last released a film with 2020’s Wife of a Spy, but in 2024, the Japanese director will make up for lost time, premiering a trio of new films.

As featured in our 2024 preview, he remade his own film with Serpent’s Path, starring Damien Bonnard, Mathieu Amalric, Grégoire Colin, and Ko Shibasaki. Before that feature sets its premiere, his 45-minute thriller Chime will debut at Berlinale this month. Now, a third 2024 film has been unveiled with Cloud.

Screen Daily reports he’s already finished shooting the project, with the first still featured above, and is in the editing process with a Japanese release planned for this September. Backed by Nikkatsu Corporation and Tokyo Theatres Company Inc., the Kurosawa-scripted project stars The Boy and the Heron‘s Masaki Suda as Ryosuke Yoshii,...

Japanese auteur Kiyoshi Kurosawa, who won best director at Venice in 2020 with Wife Of A Spy, is working on a new suspense thriller titled Cloud, which will be introduced to buyers at the EFM by Japanese studio Nikkatsu Corporation.

The feature is in post-production with a Japanese release set for September 2024. A first look at the film can be seen above.

Written by Kurosawa, the story centres on Ryosuke Yoshii, an enigmatic young man who tries to make money by reselling shrewdly obtained goods on the internet under the pseudonym ‘Ratel’.

The film stars Masaki Suda, who won best actor...

The Berlinale has rounded out its special screenings programme with three more films.

Omar Sy-starring The Strangers’ Case by Brandt Andersen is a Berlinale Special Gala.

Two Japanese mid-length films - Chime by Kiyoshi Kurosawa and August My Heaven by Riho Kudo - will play as Berlinale Specials.

Andersen’s The Strangers’ Case is about a tragedy that strikes a Syrian family in Aleppo which triggers a chain reaction of events involving five different families in four different countries. The cast includes Omar Sy, Jason Beghe and Yasmine Al Massri.

It is based on a 2020 short, Refugee, that Andersen...

The film marks the first original feature produced by the Japanese media platform.

Chime, the upcoming film from Japanese auteur Kiyoshi Kurosawa, has been set as the first original production of media platform Roadstead and will be released exclusively on the platform in 2024.

Kurosawa, who won best director at Venice in 2020 with Wife Of A Spy, shot the film in September in Tokyo. It stars Mutsuo Yoshioka as a schoolteacher whose life is disrupted by a chime that brings with it an increasing sense of dread.

It marks the first film produced by Roadstead, a media platform that was launched in December 2022 by Nekojarashi,...

Daisuke Miyazaki in New York City, July 2023. Photo courtesy of the author.Near the end of Daisuke Miyazaki’s Yamato (California) (2016), an aspiring rapper with stage fright finally raps unfettered. As she wanders through a meadow, an unmotivated movie light cuts through the natural daylight, illuminating her face in her overdue moment of release.Near the end of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s To the Ends of the Earth (2019), a travel reporter with fantasies of singing finally does so unfettered. As she wanders through a meadow, an unmotivated movie light cuts through the natural daylight, illuminating her face in her overdue moment of release. Miyazaki’s mid-2010s work undoubtedly influenced Kurosawa’s film. Both Yamato (California) and To the Ends of the Earth were shot by the same cinematographer, veteran Akiko Ashizawa. Miyazaki had also worked with Kurosawa once before, as an assistant director on Tokyo Sonata (2008), and the two remained in touch.

Two-and-a-half years is hardly much wait for any director’s latest (to say nothing of Covid times) but by Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s clip it’s a hot second. After producing one of 2022’s great moving-image works––movies, TV, streaming, whatever––he’s preparing his first feature since Wife of a Spy, and our friends at Ion Cinema got quite the get: they’ve learned Kurosawa’s rolling cameras this month on a remake of his 1998 feature Serpent’s Path.

While further details (e.g. casting) are nil, the earlier film might give us sense of what to anticipate. Even by Kurosawa’s standards is Serpent’s Path a cold-blooded and blood-chilling work, its story of revenge for a murdered child shaped by typically perfect production design, sustained atmosphere, ornate plotting. Where its sister film Eyes of the Spider––a production overlapping in cast, crew, and narrative jibe––offers a lighter vision of vengeance,...

Click here to read the full article.

Safe to say there isn’t another country bar Japan where a handful of top directors, including celebrated auteurs and an Oscar winner, learned their craft in adult films. Or perhaps even anywhere else in the world where that is imaginable.

But when cinemagoing plunged in parallel with the penetration of television sets into homes in the 1960s, it was so-called Pink Eiga that kept large parts of the movie industry afloat for decades, nurturing a generation of directors, scriptwriters and other filmmaking crew.

Usually between 60 and 70 minutes long, shot on 35mm and released in theaters, often on triple bills, the low-budget productions gave directors a lot of freedom provided they delivered the prescribed number of sex scenes.

In 1964, with the eyes of the world on Japan as it reemerged onto the world stage after World War Two as host of Tokyo Olympics,...

A New Zealand-based platform where fans track, review and share lists of movies old and new is an increasingly influential marketing tool for specialty film with budgets tight and audiences harder to reach.

Letterboxd, founded as a passion project by Auckland tech entrepreneurs Matthew Buchanan and Karl von Randow just over a decade ago, recently passed 6.5 million members, with 40-50 in North America followed by the U.K., Europe and breakout markets including Brazil, India, Australia, Indonesia and the Philippines. It has 4.4 million monthly visitors and 800 million monthly page views.

Since launch, users have logged a whopping 1 billion films they’ve seen, put 300 million films on watchlists and posted 76.8 million reviews. Average time spent per visitor per month across web and app is about 40 minutes.

Letterboxd has been profitable since 2019, which is “source of immense pride,” Buchanan tells Deadline. The founders early on declined venture capital backing, he said, to...

Amazon Prime Video has doubled down on its investment in Japan with six local originals greenlit and an additional foray into live boxing.

At an event in Tokyo on Wednesday, Amazon revealed a reboot of “Takeshi’s Castle,” the iconic game show starring Kitano Takeshi that aired on terrestrial network TBS from 1986-1989. The reboot, with the working title “Takeshi’s Castle ProjectModern Love Tokyo," the Japanese adaptation of Prime Video’s original romantic anthology series "Modern Love." The series stars Asami Mizukawa, Hiromi Nagasaku, Yûsuke Santamaria, Sôsuke Ikematsu, and Naomi Scott, with episodes directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa ("Wife of a Spy"), Naoko Ogigami ("Close-Knit"), Ryuichi Hiroki ("Ride or Die"), Nobuhiro Yamashita ("Matsugane ransha jiken"), and Atsuko Hirayanagi ("Oh Lucy!"), who also serves as showrunner. Set for 2023 is "My Lovely Yokai Girlfriend" a half-hour, young adult romantic horror adventure-comedy series about two outcasts directed by Takahiro Miki and created by Yalun Tu...

“Yanagawa,” which this week won the top prize at the Vesoul International Film Festival of Asian Cinemas in France, has been set as the opening title of the 17th Osaka Asian Film Festival in Japan. The festival, which runs as an in-person event, March 10-20, 2022 will close with multinational co-production “Miss Osaka.”

Yanagawa, was directed by Korean-Chinese auteur Zhang Lu, and was filmed in China and Japan. Telling a tale of search for East-Asian identity, the film is Zhang’s first mainly Chinese-language picture in the eleven years since “Dooman River.”

It had its world premiere screening at Busan and was subsequently the opening film for the Pingyao International Film Festival. It is expected to receive a Japanese theatrical release later this year, though a date has not yet been finalized.

A unique Danish-Norwegian-Japanese co-production, directed by Daniel Dencik, “Miss Osaka” is a drama with mystery and thriller elements that...

Martha Benyam has joined Kino Lorber as the new chief operating officer of the film distribution company.

A veteran of the film, television and digital industries, Benyam most recently served as a consultant to various media startups, where she launched Amazon video channels and led programming strategy, content acquisitions, and business development initiatives. She previously served as VP of strategy and business development at Starz, where she helped scale its original programming and launched StarzPlay Arabia. Before that, Benyam worked at AOL, where she held various roles leading content acquisition and distribution deal teams, supporting original productions, and working with the senior executive team on programming strategy and new ventures.

In her new role, Benyam will spearhead Kino Lorber’s continued push into digital distribution, building on the company’s recent launch of its AVOD channel Kino Cult, Tvod platform Kino Now, and its virtual cinema initiative Kino Marquee. Benyam...

As we continue to explore the best in 2021, today we’re taking a look at the articles that you, our dear readers, enjoyed the most throughout the past twelve months. Spanning reviews, interviews, features, podcasts, news, and trailers, check out the highlights below and return for more year-end coverage as well as a glimpse into 2022 in the coming weeks.

Most-Read Reviews

10. The Dig

9. WeWork: Or the Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn

8. kid 90

7. The Green Knight

6. Dune

5. The Most Beautiful Boy in the World

4. Mortal Kombat

3. The Girl Who Got Away

2. Ghostbusters: Afterlife

1. Saint-Narcisse

Most-Read Interviews

10. Adam Nayman on David Fincher’s Complicated Auteurism

9. Sparks on Annette, Polarizing Reactions, Leos Carax’s Vision, and Their Next Film

8. Sion Sono on Briefly Dying, His Favorite Nicolas Cage Performance, and Prisoners of the Ghostland

7. John Carpenter on Scoring Halloween Kills, Videogames, and Basketball

6. Gaspar Noé on Facing Death, Casting Dario Argento,...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: Drive My Car (2021)List-making season has fully started. Film Comment released both the top twenty films as well as the top twenty undistributed films of the year, and IndieWire published the results of a massive poll of 187 critics. Vulture's critics have each written about their top tens, and Drive My Car tops both Barack Obama and Screen Slate's annual list. Screen Slate has also included individual ballots from "contributors, friends, critics, and filmmakers," which gave Paul Schrader the opportunity to rank The Card Counter as his pick for the best film of the year. Due to a nationwide lockdown in the Netherlands, the International Film Festival Rotterdam will be taking place online, cancelling its previous plans for an in-person event. There are two weeks left to submit to the Sundance Film Festival's 2022 Native Lab,...

Close-Up is a feature that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Wife of a Spy is exclusively showing on Mubi in many countries.Late in Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Wife of a Spy, a gripping espionage thriller set in Kobe on the eve of World War II, the film’s titular heroine Satoko Fukuhara (Yu Aoi) and her well-to-do merchant husband Yusaku (Issey Takahashi)—whose clandestine activities have aroused the suspicion of the Kempeitai, Japan’s feared military police—go on an outing to a local cinema, as if to evade their surveillance and to keep up a veneer of normalcy. There, at the downtown movie house, the couple catches a screening of Sadao Yamanaka’s historical drama, Kochiyama Soshun (1936).This minor, seemingly inconsequential detail in Kurosawa’s latest conceals a hidden subtext that hints at the ominous shadow of a grinding military campaign Japan was engaged in at the time in China.

In “Wife of a Spy”, Kiyoshi Kurosawa once again proves that his bag of tricks can be matched by only a few other directors in the business. The choreographed camera movements, jarring editing, playful use of artificial and natural lighting all exhibit Kurosawa’s unique boldness and creativity. Luckily in this case, the director’s panache was followed by a well thought-out and haunting story, which has not necessarily been the case with his most recent works. The science fiction duology “Before we Vanish” and “Foreboding” were embarrassing ventures into the metaphysical themes that verged on the ridiculous. A return to a more down-to-earth story in “Wife of a Spy” thus proved to be a welcome change.

This article is part of the Asian Cinema Education Film Criticism Course 2021

Although with “Tokyo Sonata” he has successfully fought off the reductionist stereotype, for many years Kurosawa was strongly associated with the j-horror movement.

Mubi is closing the year out on a high note with their December lineup, featuring some of 2021’s most acclaimed U.S. releases.

Highlights include Tsai Ming-liang’s Days (along with his previous feature Afternoon), Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Wife of a Spy, Andreas Fontana’s Azor, Anders Edströ & C.W. Winter’s eight-hour epic The Works and Days (of Tayoko Shiojiri in the Shiotani Basin), Frank Beauvais’ Just Don’t Think I’ll Scream, and Michael M. Bilandic’s soon-to-premiere Project Space 13.

Also among the lineup is Arnaud Desplechin’s Esther Kahn, a quartet of Godard classics, Cristóbal León and Joaquín Cociña’s short The Bones, produced by Ari Aster, and much more.

Check out the lineup below and get 30 days free here.

December 1 | Pierrot le fou | Jean-Luc Godard | The Cinema of Marx and Coca-Cola: Jean-Luc Godard’s 1960s

December 2 | Le bel indifferent | Jacques Demy | Scenes from a Small Town:...

This review was largely shaped by a discussion with Goh Ming Siu and Earl Jackson regarding the film.

Winner of the Silver Lion for Best Director at this year’s Venice International Film Festival, “Wife of a Spy” is actually a TV-movie produced by and for Nhk, which was screened in theaters, however, with a different aspect ratio and color grading. This review is based on the TV version.

“Wife of a Spy” is screening at Five Flavours Asian Film Festival

The script is set in 1940, after Japan had invaded China and joined Germany and Italy as a member of the Axis. Up to this point, successful silk merchant Yusaku Fukuhara has been a man who seemed to have it all: a successful business, the respect of both employees, collaborators and friends, and a trophy wife in the face of beautiful and equally popular Satoko, who has just finished acting...

Nohara Tadashi is one of only two Japanese directors with films in the Tokyo International Film Festival’s main competition section. “Third Time Lucky” is his first theatrical feature.

Born in 1983 and a 2009 alumnus of the Graduate School of Film & New Media, Tokyo University of the Arts, Nohara is no industry newcomer. He served as assistant director on “Passion,” the 2008 graduation project of fellow film student and now widely celebrated Hamaguchi Ryusuke.

After co-directing another student film, “Elephant Love,” Nohara worked as Ad for a satellite broadcaster and as a production manager for a CG production company. After moving to Kobe in Western Japan, he directed a short, “talk to remember,” that screened at the Hiroshima International Film Festival in 2015.

His big professional break, however, was Hamaguchi’s “Happy Hour,” a 2015 ensemble drama that Nohara co-scripted with the director and one other writer. Premiering at Locarno, where its four leads...

Japanese film sellers are once again out in force at Tiffcom, which is completely online for the second year in a row. Buyers will find much familiar from the Busan market, but new titles are on offer as well.

Nikkatsu

Japan’s oldest continuously operated studio, Nikkatsu is bringing Matsui Daigo’s “Just Remembering,” a romantic drama selected for the TIFF competition. Ito Sairi and Ikematsu Soksuke star as a couple on the verge of a break-up who reminisce about better days. Matsui’s original script was inspired by the Jim Jarmusch classic “Night on the Planet.”

Also, on offer is the other Japanese competition title, “Third Time Lucky.” The film is the directorial debut of Nohara Tadashi, a scriptwriter whose credits include Hamaguchi Ryusuke’s 2015 ensemble drama “Happy Hour” and Kurosawa Kiyoshi’s WWII thriller “Wife of a Spy.” Kawamura Rira, who also appeared in “Happy Hour,” stars as...

The Museum of Modern Art announced the lineup for the 14th annual edition of The Contenders on Friday. The film series will run from Nov. 4 through Jan. 22, 2022, primarily in person with a select number of virtual screenings.

The Contenders will open with Pablo Larraîn’s “Spencer,” the Princess Diana biopic starring Kristen Stewart. Larraîn and Stewart will appear for a conversation after the screening. The closing night film will be Sebastian Meise’s “Grosse Freiheit” which, translating to “Great Freedom,” is set in postwar Germany and follows the relationship between Hans, a man imprisoned for being homosexual, and his cellmate Viktor, a convicted murderer.

“This year’s Contenders lineup includes highly anticipated genre pics, new works by the most followed auteurs such as Jane Campion (‘The Power of the Dog’) and Apichatpong Weerasethakul (‘Memoria’) and independent films that introduce emerging cinematic voices like Amalia Ulman (‘El Planeta’) and Ahmir ‘Questlove...

Not only has Ryusuke Hamaguchi directed two of the year’s best films (the masterful triptych Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy and his soothing Murakami epic Drive My Car), he’s also co-written another of 2021’s finest, Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Wife of a Spy, and now has also directed a music video for his Cannes winner.

For Japan’s Oscar entry Drive My Car, which will get a U.S. release theatrically starting November 24, musician Eiko Ishibashi has crafted a beautiful score, which is now available to stream in full. The highlight of the compositions is the single Drive My Car (Kafuku), for which Hamaguchi has shot the music video. Featuring actress Toko Miura on a drive, it’s a simple yet perfect preamble to the rhythms of the film––acting as a fine trailer in itself if you want to be left unspoiled by the film’s riches.

Watch...

Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s wartime romance was named best film at the 15th edition.

Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Wife Of A Spy picked up best film at the 15th Asian Film Awards (Afa), held at the Busan International Film Festival (Biff) tonight (October 8).

The Japanese wartime romance, which won a Silver Lion in Venice last year, also picked up awards for best actress (Aoi Yu) and costume design (Koketsu Haruki).

Zhang Yimou was named best director for his Cultural Revolution drama One Second, which recently opened the San Sebastian film festival. Zhang’s other nominated feature, spy thriller Cliff Walkers, won in...

The Japanese film industry has produced dozens of directors that, over the decades, have been hailed by Japanese critics as masters but never became well-known abroad. Kurosawa Akira and Ozu Yasujiro once got regularly named checked by foreign filmmakers visiting Japan; the locally renowned Naruse Mikio and Kinoshita Keisuke, far less often.

A similar situation has long prevailed with the so-called “4K” directors – Kore-eda Hirokazu, Kawase Naomi, Kurosawa Kiyoshi and Kitano Takeshi – who have collectively garnered the lion’s share of major festival invitations and prizes for nearly two decades, leaving a younger generation of Japanese filmmakers in relative obscurity internationally. Now one has decisively broken through the “4K” barrier: Hamaguchi Ryusuke.

Hamaguchi was this week interviewed on stage at the Busan International Film Festival by Korean star director Bong Joon-ho, on hand at the festival’s opening ceremony and again trod the red carpet, Friday evening, at the Asian Film Awards.

Kurosawa Kiyoshi’s period action drama “Wife of a Spy” was the biggest winner at the 15th edition of the Asian Film Awards. It collected three major prizes including the best film award.

The 18 prizes were handed out Friday evening at a hybrid ceremony with the in-person component held at Busan’s Paradise Hotel. Organizers said that 80 nominees attended either in person or online. Among those in Busan to tread the Afa red carpet were Korean stars and prize-winners Lee Byung-hun and Yoo Ah-in.

Directors Lee Chang-dong and Hamaguchi Ryusuke were also in attendance, along with Korean stars Jun Jong-seo, Park Jeong-min, Jang Yoon-ju, Kim Hyun-bin and Gong Seung-yeon.

“Wife of a Spy” was conceived as a TV film. A theatrical version debuted last year at the Venice Film festival and there won the Silver Lion. It enjoyed a high-profile festival career with subsequent stops at San Sebastian, El Gouna and Hainan,...

The two leading Asian auteurs held a special talk session at the Busan International Film Festival.

At the Busan International Film Festival (Biff), Oscar-winning Parasite director Bong Joon Ho held a special talk with Ryusuke Hamaguchi after the screenings of the Japanese director’s two latest films – Berlinale Silver Bear winner Wheel Of Fortune And Fantasy and Cannes best screenplay winner Drive My Car – in Gala Presentations today (October 7).

As described by programme director Nam Dong-chul at the event, the “lucky 200 audience members” who succeeded in the heightened competition to book tickets to the socially-distanced talk were treated to two...

World premieres include debut from Happy Hour co-writer Tadashi Nohara and new works from Brillante Mendoza and Mikhail Red.

Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF) has announced the full line-up for its 34th edition, including the main competition section of 15 films, among which 10 titles are world premieres. Other sections include Asian Future, Gala Selection, World Focus, Nippon Cinema Now and Japanese Animation.

The competition section includes the world premieres of two Japanese films – Third Time Lucky, the debut feature of Tadashi Nohara, who co-wrote Happy Hour and Wife Of A Spy; and Just Remembering from Daigo Matsui (Ice Cream And The...

The Eyes Of Tammy Faye from Searchlight Pictures finished in the top ten domestically (at no. 9) with the highest per screen average of the group after Shang-Chi and Free Guy. Its estimated PTA, $1,500 in 425 theaters, bested newcomers Blue Bayou and wide releases Cry Macho and Copshop on a per screen basis. That’s the good news. The bad — Eyes’ number are not fantastic and weekend stats show moviegoers still picking favorites with surgical precision and a rising tide not lifting all boats, yet.

“We had hoped for a resurgence of moviegoers in the art/specialty world this weekend, as we were booked in many of the best art houses in North America, and [while] there are gladly some exceptions… the more mature cinephile moviegoers have yet to rush out to their local specialty theatre in any great numbers,” said Searchlight’s head of distribution Frank Rodriquez. “Hopefully they will start to...

Kiyoshi Kurosawa is one of the key figures of the Japanese new auteurs’ wave that emerged around the 1990s. Among many names that found their success at the festival circuit, V-Cinema market or in the less official ways of distributions, Kurosawa was immediately heralded as one of the pioneers of J-horror, with titles such as “Cure” (1997) and “Pulse” (2001) granting him a cult reception across the globe. No matter what genre, dysfunction or timeframe he picks up, there is a consequence in Kurosawa’s body of work – a thrill that comes with a render of the environment, one that struggles with uncertainty and fear, and one that captivates the viewer’s attention throughout the ambiguity of expressions. It’s always a treat to watch a master resorting to his old tricks and leitmotivs, twisting his go-to formula to his needs, re-imagining one’s language for the present needs.

This time around,...

Central to any spy story worth its salt is the tension built around whom the audience should believe. But the memorable ones make just as powerful the theme of what the characters really do believe — as in, why they do what they do, whether they’re handler, agent, target or pawn. And to make matters even more fascinating, when some of those questions are left unanswered, that’s when some spy yarns achieve something profound about the battlefield on which they’re played.

Kiyoshi Kurosawa is one of Japan’s established masters when it comes to a knotty premise wracked with tension and secrets, whether working in horror or contemporary drama (“Tokyo Sonata”). It seems fitting, then, that for his first period film, he’d choose a World War II–era espionage tale, where identity and motive are always in play, and horror is real. The result is “Wife of a Spy,...

If you’re a world cinema lover who does not yet know the name Ryûsuke Hamaguchi—winner of the Best Screenplay prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival for his adaption of Haruki Murakami’s short story, “Drive My Car” (read our rave review)—that is very likely about to change.

Read More: Best Of Cannes 2021: 15 Must-See Movies From The Festival

Hamaguchi has been a busy fellow recently, also co-writing Kiyoshi Kurasawa’s “Wife of a Spy,” (another great Japanese film you should check out) as well as taking home Berlin’s Grand Jury prize for his anthology project, “Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy,” the trailer for which has just been released.

Continue reading ‘Wheel Of Fortune And Fantasy’ Trailer: Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s Award-Winning Anthology Film Arrives In October at The Playlist.

I’ll thrown down a gauntlet: Ryūsuke Hamaguchi is having one of the single best years for any filmmaker, ever. You’ll be forgiven for not noticing, since his two features—Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy and Drive My Car—have yet to release, but those lucky enough to see them are consistently amazed by both, all the more so when they’re not per se linked by easily identifiable auteurist traits. Fortunately both will open in the near future; Wheel is up first with an October 15 release, and thus we have a trailer.

As we said in our review from Berlin, “It is a stunning production, from the precision of Hamaguchi’s script and direction, the fine performances, and Yukiko Iioka’s gorgeous camerawork, to Fuminori Usui’s everyday costuming, the bright colors and natural light, and the gently lilting score. It’s an overwhelming film, amongst the best of the year,...

The Asian Film Awards Academy (Afaa) announced today the nominees of the 15th Asian Film Awards (AFA15).

China’s “One Second”, South Korea’s “The Book of Fish”, India’s “The Disciple”, and two Japanese films, “Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy and “Wife of a Spy” are competing for this year’s “Best Film Award.”

World renowned directors, Zhang Yimou, Lee Joon-ik, Kurosawa Kiyoshi and internationally acclaimed Hamaguchi Ryusuke, and Adilkhan Yerzhanov are in a tight race for “Best Director.”

In 2020, the 14th Asian Film Awards moved to Busan, South Korea for the first time and was held online due to Covid-19 restrictions. This year the awards will be held again in conjunction with the Busan International Film Festival on 8 October 2021 (Friday). The ceremony will commence in a hybrid form, which combines on-site attendance in Busan and online participation.

The Afaa is honoured that legendary South Korean filmmaker, Lee Chang-dong...

The Academy (Afaa) revealed the nominees for the 15th Asian Film Awards today. Thirty-six films from eight Asian regions will compete for 16 awards. China’s One Second, South Korea’s The Book of Fish, India’s The Disciple, and two Japanese films, Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy and Wife of a Spy, compete for this year’s “Best Film Award.”

Three Hong Kong films were nominated for this year’s Afa, including Drifting, directed by Jun Li, nominated for Best Supporting Actor and Actress. Limbo, directed by Cheang Pou-soi, was nominated for Best Actor, Best Cinematography, Best Production Design and Best sound; Adam Wong’s The Way We Keep Dancing was nominated for Best Original Music.

The Afaa is honoured that legendary South Korean filmmaker Lee Chang-dong will be this year’s Jury President. Lee was the lifetime award recipient at the 13th Asian Film Awards.He won the “Best...

China’s “One Second,” South Korea’s “The Book of Fish,” India’s “The Disciple,” and two Japanese films, “Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy” and “Wife of a Spy” will compete for this year’s best film prize at the Asian Film Awards

The awards again will be held again in conjunction with the Busan International Film Festival. The ceremony, on Oct. 8, 2021, will operate in a hybrid form combining on-site attendance in Busan and online participation.

In 2020, the 14th Asian Film Awards moved to Busan for the first time and was held online due to Covid-19 restrictions. In previous years, the ceremony was held in Hong Kong and Macau.

Those nominated for best director included Zhang Yimou (for “One Second”), Lee Joon-ik (for “The Book of Fish”), Hamaguchi Ryusuke (for “Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy”), Kurosawa Kiyoshi (for “Wife of a Spy”) and Kazakhstan’s Adilkhan Yerzhanov (for “Yellow Cat”).

Mainland Chinese thriller “Cliff Walkers,...