Category: Nippon Connection 2023

Double Life (ダブル・ライフ, Enen Yo, 2022)

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The heroine of Enen Yo’s Double Life (ダブル・ライフ) has a recurring dream of being trapped in an endless tunnel. No matter how long she walks, she can never see an exit, but she also claims that she is always awake to her true self. It is in a way her true self that seems to have gotten away from her as she struggles to overcome career disappointment and a moribund marriage to a passive aggressive salaryman who barely speaks to her and seems to resent her presence in his life. 

After giving up her dance career following an injury, Shiori (Atsuko Kikuchi) has been working as an assistant to movement coach Kumiko whose practice is closer to performance art than contemporary dance. Shiori had wanted to take part in one of Kumiko’s “Communicating Love” couples sessions and though her husband Ryo had originally agreed he cancels at the last minute with an abrupt text message he refuses to explain over the phone. He refuses to explain at home too, later giving an excuse that would have seemed reasonable if he’d offered it in a less abrasive manner but given his behaviour makes him seem guilty and evasive. Smelling another woman’s perfume on his shirt only deepens Shiori’s suspicions that he’s been having an affair. It’s for these reasons that she takes up the recommendations of a friend, Misaki, to contact a man who rents himself out for role play assignments to pose as her husband so that she can participate in the workshop even without Ryo’s cooperation. 

This might in someways seem perverse given that the workshop is about exploring intimacy as a couple, but as Kumiko explains it’s as much about coming to understand your own feelings as it is your partner’s. Shiori has in a sense hired Junnosuke to mirror her, conforming to her image of an idealised Ryo as the tender and loving husband he does not otherwise seem to be. Perhaps just incredibly good at his job, Junnosuke is a perfect fit for the exercise and is able to effectively pick up on Shiori’s buried anxieties echoing her dream of the tunnel but envisioning her as a beautiful butterfly dancing its way towards the exit. Shiori decides to hire him for an extended period and even rents a small flat to role play a happier marriage but also begins to lose sight of the boundaries of their “fake” relationship.

As Junnosuke says, once he’s in character it’s his lived “reality” until it’s not, but one also has to wonder what toll this lifestyle takes on the core “Junnosuke”, whether he can be said to exist at all and is able to have “authentic” personal relationships or whether not having them affects his life if he is able to derive emotional satisfaction through his various role playing activities. In any case as he later reminds Shiori he is a creature of her creation who only ever mirrored her desires and in doing so showed her who she is and what she wants along with the way out of the dark tunnel towards a more satisfying existence. 

Kumiko, who is herself dealing with a sense of loss, tells her something similar in explaining that she must rediscover her centre of gravity which is also a means of spiritual reorientation in recalibrating herself to her present physicality and learning move in tune with the rhythms of the body she has now not the one she used to have before the injury which she must fully accept as a part of herself. It’s rediscovering her love of dance that grants her mastery over her body and soul and allows her to find a way through her despair in accepting that she must change to meet the new future rather than remaining trapped in a disatfying present defined by a longing for an immutable past. 

Shot with a breezy poeticism that is at once lyrical and naturalistic, Yo’s gentle drama explores a process of healing conducted through theoretical role play that suggests that in certain cases literal authenticity is less important than the emotional in making an essential truth fully visible. In any case through living her “double life”, Shiori gains a new perspective on herself and others that finally allows her to see the light at the end of a tunnel she feared would never appear.

Double Life screens in Frankfurt 11th June as part of this year’s Nippon Connection.

International trailer (English subtitles)

Baby Assassins 2 Babies (ベイビーわるきゅーれ2ベイビー, Yugo Sakamoto, 2023)

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Chisato (Akari Takaishi) and Mahiro (Saori Izawa) continue to struggle with everyday life in Yugo Sakamoto’s sequel to the hugely popular slacker comedy action fest, Baby Assassins, Baby Assassins 2 Babies (ベイビーわるきゅーれ2ベイビー, Baby Valkyrie 2 Baby). A deadpan satire on institutional bureaucracy in the underground hitman society, the film sees the girls targeted by a pair of rivals that in any other film may be the heroes of the story only this time around they’re hapless challengers whose attempt game the system only results in more chaos and misery. 

Beginning to get their act together, the girls are still it seems completely hopeless at managing their money and are suddenly faced not only with a hugely expensive bill for a gym membership they took out five years previously and forgot to cancel, but also reminded that they were upgraded from the “Jolly” insurance scheme to the “Merry” insurance scheme when they graduated high school so their payment information has expired and needs updating. It’s this extreme set of circumstances that lead to them being in a bank at the moment it is robbed by a pair of fugitive thieves. The terms of their assassins contract forbid them from using their skills outside of the job, but they can’t afford to wait any longer and decide to tackle the robbers so they can send their transfer through before the deadline but end up getting suspended for their pains. While suspended they’re forbidden from killing anyone and get no salary so they’re back where they started looking for part-time jobs to help make ends meet. 

Their predicament is mirrored by antagonists Yuri (Joey Iwanaga) and Makoto (Tatsuomi Hamada) who as the film opens end up killing completely the wrong gangsters because of a logistical mixup. The problem is that Yuri and Makoto are subcontractors not yet admitted to the Assassins Guild which means they don’t get access to the best jobs and have no workplace protections. Essentially what they want is to join the union, but they aren’t qualified so their boss, Akagi (Junpei Hashino), comes up with the neat idea of knocking off Chisato and Mahiro to free up their spots in the Guild. 

Sakamoto has great fun satirising Assassin’s Guild bureaucracy as the girls are constantly forced to reference their contract through Mr Susano (Tsubasa Tobinaga) and his little blue book to figure out what is and isn’t allowed in their lives as top hit women. Meanwhile, they’re once again forced to try and live “normally” and find they aren’t very good it at it while having to take quite literally odd jobs as shopping arcade mascots managed by a weird old man (Tetsu Watanabe) obsessed with Masaki Suda and the film We Made a Beautiful Bouquet which becomes something of a running gag. Both Chisato and Mahiro and Yuki and Makoto reflect on the strange cafe hierarchy of being offered a selection of tiered menu sets at escalating prices all the way from basic chicken to barbecued meats as reflective of a wealth-based social system while the boys continue to vacillate over asking out the pretty waitress. 

It’s kill or be killed but the girls know on some level that the guys are just like them and even quite good hitmen for “amateurs” so it’s a shame they have to die for having attacked and nearly killed one of their friends. After sorting out who’s won through a high octane series of shootouts and one on one fights, the four sit down on the ground and share snacks while waiting for the inevitable like they’d just been having a violent picnic while hanging out in a disused warehouse. Even the losers seem to accept their fates, acknowledging that they’ve lost in a fair fight and making no further attempt to resist. 

In any case, adulting is hard even when you’re not a top assassin struggling with when it’s appropriate to put your training to use. As the girls point out, it’s hard to get by on part time work when it would take a hundred days dressed in a humiliating panda outfit to earn what they’d get for one kill while freelancing is strictly forbidden along with strike action and taking one’s grievances to Twitter. Turns out the assassin life is more complicated that you’d think and just as filled with annoying bureaucracy as any salaryman job. Thankfully the friendship between Chisato and Mahiro has only grown stronger as they face off against the twin threats of red tape and adulting in their lives as “contract” killers.

Baby Assassins 2 Babies screens in Frankfurt 10/11th June as part of this year’s Nippon Connection.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Images: ©2023 “BABY ASSASSINS 2” Film Partners

Egoist (エゴイスト, Daishi Matsunaga, 2022)

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If love is unselfish, is it really love at all? Based on a semi-autobiographical novel by Makoto Takayama, Daishi Matsunaga’s deeply moving romantic drama Egoist (エゴイスト) asks if all love is in the end transactional and if to deny its “selfishness” is akin to denying love itself because it would mean denying a basic human need for connection and reciprocity. In the end, perhaps selfish is what we should be with love because we are always running out of time and if we aren’t careful it will slip away from us unnoticed.

An “extreme realist”, fashion editor Kosuke (Ryohei Suzuki) is already full of regrets and many of them linking back to the early death of his mother from illness when he was only 14. It’s clear that his financial wealth helps to fill an emotional void but also that he’s lonely and longs for a sense of family that’s long been absent from his life. He rarely visits the conservative hometown where he was bullied for being different, and seems to have a strained relationship with his widowed father (Akira Emoto) who doesn’t know that Kosuke is gay and continues to ask him about getting married and settling down. Early on in his courtship with Ryuta (Hio Miyazawa), a personal trainer he met through a friend, Kosuke remarks that he’s never met a lover’s mother before hinting at the landmarks of a relationship such as marriage that LGBTQ+ people often miss out on in a conservative culture in which such things cannot always be discussed openly.

Later, Ryuta’s mother Taeko (Sawako Agawa) tells Kosuke that knew from that first meeting that they were more than just friends and was happy that her son had someone he loved who loved him regardless if they were a man or a woman. But just when the relationship had seemed to be blossoming, Ryuta had abruptly tried to break up with Kosuke explaining that he had been involved in sex work since his early teens in order to support his mother who was unable to work due to illness. Now that he’s experienced real romantic love he finds sex work “painful” but has no other means of supporting himself and so gives up love for economic necessity. “I’ll buy you,” Kosuke unironically counters adding a note of literal transactionality to their relationship which is already fraught with disparity in the respective differences in their ages along with Kosuke’s wealth and Ryuta’s poverty. 

Kosuke later describes his gesture as “pure”, something he’d previously called Ryuta while also remarking that he found him too “polite” in bed and would rather he be a little more “selfish”. In a way it’s altruistic, he isn’t really trying to trap Ryuta into a compensated relationship only to help him while simultaneously ensuring that he stays in his life. His wealth fills a void, but it’s by giving pieces of it away that he feels that void decreasing. Kosuke first gives Ryuta gifts for his mother, knowing that it’s easier for him to accept them because doing so is unselfish when the gift is for someone else. Even so as he later acknowledges sometimes the gift is more for himself than the recipient, a means not of manipulation but of healing. Kosuke claims not to know what love is and largely mediates it through money along with additional acts of care, but as Taeko later tells him it doesn’t really matter if he doesn’t know because they felt his love anyway. 

Matsunaga frequently cuts backs to visual motifs such as door numbers, envelopes, and dropped coins to hint at the transactionality of love but eventually reflects that love is an act of exchange in which the desire to be loved is an essential component. Kosuke eventually asks his father how it was for him when his mother was dying and he recalls a conversation in which she said she wanted to leave him because she couldn’t bear to see him suffering for her, a request which could in itself be read as “selfish” even in its “selflessness” with his reply implying that it’s alright to be selfish in love because in way it might be its ultimate expression. Filming with handheld realism, Matsunaga captures the rhythms of contemporary gay life along with the easy giddiness of burgeoning romance and the poignancy of profound loss tempered only by a fleeting feeling of warmth and the jealous memory of a “selfish” love. 

Egoist screens in Frankfurt 9th June as part of this year’s Nippon Connection.

International trailer (English subtitles)

Amiko (こちらあみ子, Yusuke Morii, 2022)

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Is there a sadder thing than a solo walkie talkie? The heroine of Yusuke Morii’s quirky dramedy Amiko (こちらあみ子, Kochira Amiko) is given a pair of retro presents for her birthday, a set of toy radios and a disposable camera each intended to help her bond with the baby brother expected to join the family in the immediate future, but the sad fact is that Amiko has no one else to communicate with and largely lives in her own little world like a ghost in her own home. 

Even so, she doesn’t seem to be particularly lonely and is only just beginning to realise that she’s a little different from the other kids. Living in a nice house in tranquil seaside town in Hiroshima, Amiko appears to be a happy little girl with a loving family around her even if her relationship with step-mother Sayuri (Machiko Ono) who teaches calligraphy in a back room may be a little strained. Sayuri disapproves of Amiko’s unusual behaviour and for some reason does not allow her to join the other children at the classes leading Amiko to peer in from a crack in the door until one of the other kids inevitably notices her. 

In an odd way, Amiko’s situation improves when the family encounters a tragedy, losing the baby they’d all been so excited about welcoming. Touched by her attempts to look after her as she recovers at home, Sayuri warms to Amiko and embraces her as a daughter finally inviting her to take part in the calligraphy classes once they resume. But a well-meaning gesture on Amiko’s part that from an adult perspective is insensitive and inappropriate throws Sayuri into a depressive spiral from which she never recovers. The rest of the family describe Amiko’s gesture as a “prank” as if she did it with malicious intent when really it was just her way of dealing with her grief. Of course, everyone else is trying to deal with their grief too and each going about it in their own way so they don’t have time or really the inclination to sit down with Amiko and help process what’s just happened to their family. 

Amiko becomes convinced that there’s a ghost haunting her balcony and it must be that of her younger brother who hasn’t made it to Heaven yet and is trying to come home, though her attempts to ask her father about it see her literally pushed away while he can’t see her confusion as anything other than a hurtful fantasy. There is indeed a ghost haunting her family, but it’s the grief they cannot share with each other or bear to explain. Amiko’s older brother Kota (Kensei Okumura) begins to go off the rails and then leaves the family entirely to join a biker gang instead. Amiko’s father (Arata Iura) doesn’t even bother to look for him, expressing only mild confusion when Amiko points out that Kota doesn’t come home anymore answering only that he’s sure he saw him “the other day”. 

It’s no wonder then that Amiko retreats into a fantasy world, singing a song to herself to ward off ghosts while followed around by several of them including for some reason mummies and people from 18th century Europe. She in turn follows a boy she likes seemingly oblivious to the various ways he attempts to avoid her, while otherwise ignoring a loudmouth kid who is the only other person willing to talk to her despite her classmates’ conviction that she is simply “weird”. Amiko maybe beginning to realise this herself, wondering if her forced courtship may have strayed into the “creepy” and asking directly for advice wanting to know what about her seems to make others uncomfortable or embarrassed. After a period of mild neglect, Amiko even starts walking around school in bare feet because she doesn’t have indoor shoes or clean socks but most seem to just regard it as another expression of her oddness. As the other kid points out, it’s both a symbol of her “freedom” and one of the reasons she gets bullied. Amiko’s story is sad, but Amiko doesn’t know that and simply goes on living in her own little world with its strange logic simply waving to the departing boats of the floating dead with a cheerful “I’m fine” while otherwise abandoned on an unfamiliar shore with only herself to rely on.

Amiko screens in Frankfurt 8th June as part of this year’s Nippon Connection.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Roleless (宮松と山下, Masahiko Sato, Yutaro Seki, Kentaro Hirase, 2022)

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Ever felt like a bit player in your own life? For the hero of Masahiko Sato, Yutaro Seki and Kentaro Hirose’s Roleless (宮松と山下, Miyamatsu to Yamashita), it’s more like he lives ten thousand lives if only for an instant in his life as an extra and may have, in a way, cultivated an image of himself as a blank canvas who no longer exists in an absolute form. In a way you could call it multiverse living, but when confronted with a possible point of origin, a lost selfhood he may have forgotten or wilfully rejected, it presents him with an existential question not so much of who he wants to be but if he wants to be at all. 

We first encounter him as an unlucky retainer in a jidaigeki who is quickly cut down only to rise again and run around the back to give his name as “Miyamatsu, a samurai” to the prop girl who gives him a different hat so can he go back out there and die a second time. Miyamatsu has an air of perpetual blankness in his often vacant expression as if he were both there and not. The film often wrong foots us and we can never be sure what is “real” and what part of a movie, except that it all obviously part of the movie we ourselves are watching. We see what we think are moments from Miyamatsu’s private life only to realise that the camera was rolling all along when someone shouts “Cut!” and it becomes apparent that Miyamatsu was not its main focus. 

Along the way he gives hints of his loss of selfhood, earnestly replying that he doesn’t know when a fellow extra quizzes him on the watch he’s wearing and how he got it but his discomfort could stem from several places and it’s never quite clear how much of an interior life Miyamatsu creates for his various roles, whether he really does just see them as performers of an action, is playing “himself” as he peers over a police cordon at a crime scene, or is a fully fledged person with an individual history. Later he tells a colleague who admires the way he fills in forms at his part time job working at a cable car that he’s always enjoyed the process of filling in a predetermined frame but also that he likes the floating sensation the cable cars give him. 

All of which might explain why he’s so destabilised when a man (Toshinori Omi) approaches him claiming that they worked together as taxi drivers more than a decade earlier and that his name is Yamashita. He apparently “disappeared” after sustaining a head injury and has been “missing” ever since. The man takes him back to the home of his much younger sister, Ai (Noriko Nakagoshi), who has since married and appears to be incredibly relived to see him even if it seems she might also be hiding something. He wonders if it’s suspicious that there are no photos of him in their family home, but is reminded that with the age difference he hadn’t lived there while she was a child and only came back after their parents died to take care of her because she was still in high school. Her husband, Kenichiro (Kanji Tsuda), seems to be constantly needling him though again, it isn’t always clear whether he actually wants him to remember or suspects that he already does and is choosing to pretend not to. 

Even so, Miyamatsu slides into the life of Yoji Yamashita as easily as any other role finding his way back into the character with unexpected moments of connection such as the muscle memory that grants him a perfect baseball swing, or the strangely familiar taste of cigarettes to a non-smoker. Then again, there’s obviously something sinister going on, a darkness underlying his “personal” history that might have made him want to absent himself from himself or else an oppressive sense of bullying that is reflected in Ai’s hesitant answer when Yamashita remarks on what a good husband Kenichiro seems to be. Miyamatsu claims that he’s ever only played one “real” role, and in a way this is it as he begins to claim something like a backstory even if it’s one he may not ultimately want that nevertheless renders him a little less vacant. Mysterious and unsettling, the film asks some probing questions about the nature of identity, whether it is self-defined or gifted, but also discovers a kind of serenity in Miyamatsu’s free floating life of transient realities.

Roleless screened as part of this year’s Nippon Connection

Clip (no subtitles)

Nippon Connection Confirms Full Lineup for 2023

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Nippon Connection, the largest showcase for Japanese cinema anywhere in the world, returns with another fantastic selection of new and classic films screening in Frankfurt from 6th to 11th June. This year’s Nippon Rising Star Award will go to Drive My Car’s Toko Miura whose films I Am What I Am, and Our Huff and Puff Journey, will also be screening.

Nippon Cinema

  • #Manhole – a salaryman’s moment of triumph is disrupted when he falls down a manhole the night before his wedding in Kazuyoshi Kumakiri’s unhinged B-movie thriller. Review.
  • A Far Shore – a teenage mother struggles to make a life for herself in contemporary Okinawa in Masaaki Kudo’s bleak social drama. Review.
  • A Hundred Flowers – an expectant father finds himself confronted with paternal anxiety and past trauma on learning that his mother has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in Genki Kawamura’s adaptation of his own novel. Review.
  • Baby Assassins – a pair of mismatched high school girls raised as elite assassins get swept into gangland conflict while forced to live together to learn how integrate into society in Yugo Sakamoto’s deadpan slacker comedy. Review.
  • Baby Assassins 2 – sequel in which the girls give up their jobs as hitwomen but are chased by two other killers for hire.
  • December – bereaved parents are confronted by the unresolved past when the woman who killed their daughter appeals her sentence in Anshul Chauhan’s empathetic courtroom drama. Review.
  • Egoist – LGBTQ+ romantic drama from Daishi Matsunaga (Pieta in the Toilet) in which a fashion editor falls in love with a personal trainer.
  • I Am What I Am – sensitive drama in which an asexual woman is pressured into a blind date but ends up making a friend instead.
  • Lesson in Murder – a diffident student falls under the spell of a manipulative serial killer in Kazuya Shirashi’s intense mystery drama. Review.
  • Mondays: See You This Week – timeloop comedy in which a collection of colleagues are forced to endure the same week over and over again.
  • Mountain Woman – mystical drama set in the late 18th century in which a young woman walks into the mountains and meets a mysterious man.
  • My Small Land – a young woman’s life is destabilised when her father’s asylum claim is rejected in Emma Kawada’s empathetic debut feature. Review.
  • Nabbie’s Love – Okinawan dramedy in which a woman quits her job in Tokyo and returns to her grandparents’ home only for her life to be distupted when grandma’s first love resurfaces.
  • Okiku and the World – period drama from Junji Sakamoto in which two manure men encounter a samurai’s daughter.
  • Plan 75 – an elderly woman finds herself pushed towards voluntary euthanasia by a society driven only by productivity in Chie Hayakawa’s dark dystopian drama. Review.
  • Shin Ultraman – Ultraman returns to rescue kaiju-plagued Japan from geopolitical tensions and internal bureaucracy in Shinji Higuchi’s take on the classic tokusatsu franchise. Review.
  • Special Screening: Drive my Car – a theatre director begins to overcome his sense of inertia after bonding with a young woman hired to drive his car in Hamaguchi’s deeply moving drama. Review.
  • Special Screening: Our Huff and Puff Journey – youth drama from Daigo Matsui in which four superfans of the band CreepHyp take off on a road trip to Tokyo by bicycle.
  • Spring In Between – romantic drama in which a magazine editor falls in love with an autistic painter.
  • Straying – an adulterous couple on the brink of divorce are brought closer together while looking for their runaway cat in Rikiya Imaizumi’s contemporary romantic drama. Review.
  • The Zen Diary – a mountain ascetic gains a new perspective when confronted with mortality in Yuji Nakae’s contemplative foodie drama. Review.
  • Thorns of Beauty – two women team up to get revenge on a no good ex.
  • To the Supreme – zany comedy about four women in relationships with terrible boyfriends.
  • Yudo – a young man returns home hoping to turn his father’s old bathhouse into an apartment complex but soon reconsiders.

Nippon Animation

  • Future Boy Conan – three episodes of the classic Hayao Miyazaki-directed series. Screening in German dub/Japanese with German subtitles.
  • Gold Kingdom and Water Kingdom – fantasy anime in which the wedding between the children of two kingdoms is disrupted.
  • Lonely Castle in the Mirror – an isolated young woman discovers a magic portal to a desert island.
  • Poupelle of Chimeney Town – animated adaptation of the picture book by Akihiro Nishino. Screening in Japanese with English subtitles / German dub.
  • Special Screening: Tekkonkinkreet – a pair of orphan street kids find battle to save their town from gangster developers in Michael Arias’ atmospheric adaptation of Taiyo Matsumoto’s manga. Review.
  • Sumikkogurashi: The Little Wizard in the Blue Moonlight – adorable adventure in which the Sumikkogurashi guys go on an adventure to see the moon. Screening in Japanese with with German live synchronisation.
  • The Deer King – a lone survivor comes to represent both salvation and destruction in Ando & Miyaji’s fantasy adventure. Review. Screening in Japanese with German subtitles.

Nippon Visions

  • Amiko – Quirky drama loosely inspired by Natsuko Imamura’s novel Atarashii Musume following an eccentric young girl in the wake of a traumatic event in her family.
  • Double Life – a former dancer who gave up her career following an injury hires a ringer to pose as her husband when he refuses to take part in a couples dance workshop.
  • Hoarder on the Border – a failed pianist takes a job clearing houses and is confronted by dark secrets.
  • Journey – probing drama in which a cleaner applies to go on a space expedition.
  • Remembering Every Night – drama following a series of women living in Tama New Town.
  • Roleless – a cable car driver and perpetual movie extra flounders when forced to play the leading role in his own life.
  • Sayonara Girls – teen friendship drama following four young women as they prepare to leave high school.
  • Scary Friend – eerie fairytale in which a young girl whose only friends are stuffed toys she makes herself encounters a mysterious killer.
  • Single 8 – teen drama set in the summer of 1978 when a group of friends decide to make a movie after seeing Star Wars.
  • TOCKA – drama in which a man wants to die so that his daughter can have the insurance money but his policy doesn’t cover suicide so he teams up with someone else in a similar position.
  • Your Lovely Smile – Hirobumi Watanabe stars as a version of himself but this time for Lim Kah-Wai as the pair come together in shared sensibly and frustration with the indie way of life. Review.

Nippon Docs

  • A Son – documentary following a social worker who adopts a 20-year-old man.
  • I Am a Comedian – documentary following a controversial comedian who was banned by TV networks because of his political rants.
  • Maelstrom – personal documentary following the director’s return home from New York after becoming a wheelchair user following an accident.
  • My Anniversaries – documentary following a man who was falsely imprisoned for murder for 29 years and has continued to fight to clear his name since his release on parole in 1996.
  • Soup and Ideology – documentarian Yang Yonghi returns to the subject of her family in coming to an understanding of her mother while learning of her traumatic history. Review.
  • Special Screening: Ryuichi Sakamoto – Coda – documentary following late musician Ryuichi Sakamoto. Screening in original language with German subtitles.
  • Tokyo Uber Blues – documentary filmmaker Taku Aoyagi documents his life as after taking a job as an Uber Eats driver in the early days of the pandemic.
  • Umui – Guardians of Traditions – documentary focussing on traditional music and dance in Okinawa.

Nippon Retro

This year’s Nippon Retro is dedicated to Keisuke Kinoshita.

  • Army – subversive wartime propaganda film in which a mother prepares to send her son away to war.
  • Carmen Comes Home – Japan’s first colour film starring Hideko Takamine as a young woman who visits home after becoming a famous stripper in Tokyo.
  • Carmen’s Pure Love – loose sequel in which Carmen struggles to make it in the city and is drawn into the elite art scene and the political campaign of a right-wing candidate.
  • Morning for the Osone Family – melancholy drama in which a family is divided by war.
  • She Was Like a Wild Chrysanthemum – heartbreaking romantic drama in which an old man looks back on his doomed first love. Review.
  • Spring Dreams – chaos engulfs a wealthy family when a sweet potato man collapses in their house. Review.
  • The River Fuefuki – period drama in which peasant brothers enlist in the Takeda army in order to escape their poverty.
  • Snow Flurry – drama following a mother and son treated as poor relations by the father’s noble family. Review.
  • Twenty-Four Eyes – moving drama following a school teacher who is sent to a remote island in 1928 and witnesses it torn apart by the effects of war despite its physical distance.

Nippon Connection takes place in Frankfurt, Germany from 6th to 11th June. Tickets are available now via the official website where you can also find full details on all the films as well as timetabling information. Unless otherwise stated, films screen in Japanese with English subtitles. You can keep up with all the latest information by following the festival on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, and Instagram.