Now in its 21st year, Montreal’s Fantasia International Film Festival is back with some of the best genre movies from across the world. Like every other year, the festival has a large and varied selection of East Asian cinema on offer beginning with opening night movies The Villainess and JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, and continuing right until the closing gala, Jang-hoon’s A Taxi Driver. The full complement of East Asian feature films runs as follows:
China
- Extraordinary Mission – undercover cop action drama from Infernal Affairs’ Alan Mak and Anthony Pun
- The Final Master – martial arts drama from Xu Haofeng
- Free and Easy – winner of the Special Jury Award for Cinematic Vision at this year’s Sundance, Geng Jun’s Free and Easy is an absurd crime caper and exposé of small town life.
- God of War – historical action from Gordon Chan
- Have a Nice Day – animated crime drama from Liu Jian
- Wu Kong – Eddie Peng stars as the titular Monkey King in Derek Kwok’s take on the classic tale.
Hong Kong
- Bastard Swordsman – classic Shaw Brothers action from 1983 directed by Tony Liu Chun-Ku (screening on 35mm Shaw Scope)
- Made in Hong Kong – Fruit Chan’s tragic tale of alienated youth in handover over Hong Kong screens in the brand new 4K restoration premiered at the Udine Far East Film Festival.
- Shock Wave – Andy Lau plays a valiant bomb disposal officer in Herman Yau’s impressively staged action drama. Review.
- Vampire Cleanup Department – a vampire hunter falls in love with a vampire in this retro comedy from Yan Pak-Wing and Chiu Sin-Hang.
Japan
- Almost Coming, Almost Dying – New Year’s Eve goes very wrong for the protagonist of Toshimasa Kobayashi’s surreal comedy.
- Death Note: Light up the NEW World – the Death Note saga continues in Shinsuke Sato’s big budget sequel starring Masahiro Higashide, Sosuke Ikematsu, and Masaki Suda. Review.
- Genocidal Organ – sci-fi techno thriller and third in the series of anime adaptations of novels by Project Itoh.
- Gintama – Yuichi Fukuda adapts the much loved manga for the big screen with Shun Oguri in the lead role.
- The H-Man – classic Toho special effects thriller directed by Ishiro Honda in which a radiation enhanced threat reemerges to stalk the rain drenched streets of Tokyo. Review.
- Innocent Curse – Takashi Shimizu’s latest slice of J-horror complete with creepy ghost kids and a shady avenger.
- Japanese Girls Never Die – the disappearance of a young woman sparks a mini revolution in Daigo Matsui’s exuberant drama.
- JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable – Takashi Miike picks up Hirohiko Araki’s classic manga about a long running family feud in which heroes and villains duke it out by proxy with a power known as Stand.
- Junk Head – witty steampunk themed stop motion from Takahide Hori.
- Kodoku Meatball Machine – another slice of splatter horror from Yoshihiro Nishimura
- Love and Other Cults – youth drifts in search of safe resting place in Eiji Uchida’s latest irreverent drama. Review.
- The Mole Song: Hong Kong Capriccio – Reiji’s got himself into another mess in this sequel to the original Mole Song directed by Takashi Miike and scripted by Kankuro Kudo.
- Mumon: Land of Stealth – an ace ninja has to attend to the encroaching threat of Oda Nobunaga as well as being recently married in Yoshihiro Nakamura’s jidaigeki.
- Museum – Shun Oguri stars as a maverick cop in Keishi Otomo’s noirish adaptation of the Ryosuke Tomoe manga.
- Napping Princess – Kenji Kamiyama returns with a strange story of a young girl dreaming her life (and perhaps that of many others) away.
- Night is Short, Walk on Girl – Masaaki Yuasa adapts another of Tomihiko Morimi’s novels in this surreal, animated romantic comedy.
- Rage – Lee Sang-il adapts another Shuichi Yoshida novel as a Tokyo murder provokes three stories of suspicion and mistrust.
- Shin Godzilla – Godzilla is back and bigger than ever in Hideaki Anno and Shin Higuchi’s reboot.
- Shinjuku Swan II – Sion Sono returns to the red light district for another round of turf wars in the Shinjuku Swan sequel.
- Teiichi: Battle of Supreme High – politics rules at an elite Japanese high school where teenager Teiichi is plotting his path to the prime-ministership of Japan. Review.
- Tokyo Ghoul – Kentaro Hagiwara adapts Sui Ishida’s hidden zombie manga in which a young boy suddenly finds himself half-ghoul after a near fatal accident leaving him with a craving for human flesh.
- The Tokyo Night Sky is Always the Densest Shade of Blue – Yuya Ishii’s poetic love/hate letter to Tokyo inspired by the poems of Tahi Saihate. Review.
- What a Wonderful Family 2 – the Hirata family is back for another round of hilarious family drama in Yoji Yamada’s comedy sequel.
Korea
- Confidential Assignment – a North Korean special forces officer chases a suspect into the south and teams up with a bumbling but good hearted policeman in this action packed buddy cop comedy. Review.
- A Day – a father desperately tries to save his daughter in this time loop drama.
- Fabricated City – a disillusioned young man makes a hero of himself online but gets caught up in a real world conspiracy when he’s framed for murder, prompting his online squad to step out of the shadows in his defence. Review.
- House of the Disappeared – A woman tries to find the truth behind the disappearances of her husband and son in this creepy haunted house horror movie.
- The Senior Class – a group of art students approach graduation in Hong Deok-pyo’s gritty adult animation.
- The Sheriff in Town – An ex-cop decides its time to clean up his seaside town in this comedy action movie.
- Split – a washed up former bowler takes in an autistic boy for his savant bowling skills in this warmhearted sports drama.
- A Taxi Driver – Song Kang-ho drives a German photo journalist into the Gwanju Massacre in this hard-hitting yet lighthearted historical venture.
- The Villainess – a sleeper assassin’s life is threatened by the reappearance of two men from her past.
Others
- Jailbreak – Cambodian prison break action.
- Town in a Lake – atmospheric Philippine thriller
- Mon Mon Mon Monsters – horrible kids torture monsters in this oddly funny nihilistic teen drama from Taiwan
- Bad Genius – a group of brainy Thai teens attempt to fly to Australia, take an exam, and then fly back to give their friends the answers before the time difference catches up with them.
- Broken Sword Hero – Thai martial arts drama.
Fantasia International Film Festival takes place in Montreal from July 13 – Aug. 2, 2017. You can find full details for all the films as well as ticketing information on the official website, and you can keep up with all the latest festival news via the official Facebook page, Twitter account, Instagram and Vimeo channels.
Japan Foundation London is back with another early summer series of free film screenings and this time the focus is very much on food! Summer Explorers 3 takes place over two Saturdays – 15th and 22nd July, 2017, at the Prince Charles Cinema and BAFTA respectively. Tickets are free but you can only reserve seats at one film on each day (if you apply for more than one film you’ll be placed on the waiting list for your second choice). Full details on how to apply can be found on the 
Kazuhiro Soda’s documentary The Oyster Factory which examines a local oyster fishing community as it welcomes two workers from China.
Co-written by Masahiro Shinoda, Masaki Hamamoto’s Akanezora – Beyond the Crimson Sky stars Masaaki Uchino as a tofu maker who travels from Kyoto to Edo, sets up a shop and marries a local girl.
Inspired by Hiromu Arakawa’s popular manga, Silver Spoon is the story of city boy Yugo who enrols in an agricultural college in Hokkaido to get away from his overbearing parents.
Yukiko Mishima’s Drop of the Grapevine is the second in the director’s Hokkaido series and stars Yo Oizumi and Shota Sometani as two farming brothers one of whom operates a vineyard while the other grows wheat to make bread.
Fresh from its Cannes premiere, Jung Byung-gil’s action thriller The Villainess will get its first UK screening at FrightFest 2017. The horror-centric film festival takes place at Cineworld Leicester Square and the Prince Charles Cinema in Central London across the August bank holiday from 24th to 28th August, 2017.
Other East Asian offerings include a preview of the Japan produced TV series which originally ran on streaming service Hulu, 
The final film on offer, 
The complete programme for the Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival 2017 has now been revealed and as reported, the festival will be paying homage to the late director Seijun Suzuki with a 
Detective Bureau 2-3: Go to Hell Bastards is everything its name suggests – crazy, cartoonish fun as a Joe Shishido goes undercover, hangs out in Christmas themed cabaret bars and sings a few songs all the name of justice (and a paycheck). 
Youth of the Beast proved a turning point in Suzuki’s career. No longer content to play along with restrictive studio codes, Suzuki embraces his talent for colourful absurdism as Shishido once again finds himself undercover in the yakuza underworld.
Tokyo Drifter found few fans among studio bosses, but takes Suzuki’s psychedelic use of colour to all new highs in the story of a gangster unable to escape from his violent past.
Making another foray into wartime desperation, Suzuki adapts Taijiro Tamura’s Gate of Flesh with Shishido as a washed-up former soldier driving a wedge between a group of fiercely loyal prostitutes. 
The one that got him fired from Nikkatsu, Branded to Kill is the absurd story of a steely hitman with an addiction to the smell of cooking rice who finds his life derailed by a beautiful woman and a butterfly. 
Zigeunerweisen marks Suzuki’s return to filmmaking after the long series of court battles following his dismissal from Nikkatsu. The first in the Taisho Trilogy, Zigeunerweisen stars Yoshio Harada as one third of an eerily surreal love triangle. 
The follow up to Zigeunerweisen, Kagero-za stars Yusaku Matsuda in a ghostly tale of love and writer’s block. 
Suzuki takes a wry look at the origins of fascism in Fighting Elegy as the young men of his age engage themselves in “manly” pursuits but are obliged to sublimate their other desires into a lust for violence. 
Joe Odagiri and Zhang Ziyi star in the bizarre yet infectious folktale inspired musical, Princess Raccoon.
For his final film, Pistol Opera, Suzuki revisits Branded to Kill but replaces Shishido with a female assassin longing to be number one.
Now in its 11th year, Japan Cuts returns to Japan Society New York from 13th to 23rd July bringing some of the best in recent Japanese cinema with it as well as a host of special guests and events. The festival will open with Yoshihiro Nakamura’s ninja drama, Mumon: The Land on Stealth on 13th July while award-winning animation In This Corner of the World will close the proceedings on July 23. The full lineup is as follows:
Yoshihiro Nakamura’s ninja epic 
Kyoko Miyake’s documentary 
Taking inspiration from the poetry of Tahi Saihate, 
Kenichi Matsuyama stars in a moving biopic of the real life shoji star who gave it all for the game in 
The latest film from Okinawan filmmaker Go Takamine, 
Yosuke Kubozuka plays a depressed boxer who finds friendship in the 
Megumi Sasaki’s documentary 
Tetsuya Fujiwara and Hideaki Ito star in 
Based on the hit smartphone game 
Tai Kato’s underseen documentary 
Shingo Matsumura’s gentle 
Kenji Yamauchi adapts his own stage play skewering the middle classes as a boring dinner party gets progressively out of hand exposing each of their flaws, weaknesses, and well hidden secrets in 
Produced by Shinji Aoyama and Takenori Sento, Sora Hokimoto’s debut feature 
Kei Shichiri revisits Before the Day Breaks ten years on and adds all-new sound and imaging. Based on the manga by Naoki Yamamoto, 
The first film made outside of Japan for veteran filmmaker Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 
Konrad Aderer’s documentary 
Theatre director Junko Emoto makes her film debut with 
The third in a series of films adapted from the works of Hakodate native novelist Yasushi Sato, Nobuhiro Yamashita’s 
Joe Odagiri stars as the artist Léonard Tsuguharu 
Elite public school boy Teiichi dreams of becoming Prime Minister in Akira Nagai’s manga adaptation, 
An adaptation of Keigo Higashino’s 2013 novel, 
An Iranian student and depressed bartender face a series of romantic and cross cultural confusions in Takuro Nakamura’s 
Depressed teenager Sakura (Hanae Kan) has a complicated relationship with Americanisation thanks to growing up near Japan’s biggest mainland American military base but an encounter with the half-American daughter of her mother’s boyfriend prompts a reconsideration of her life goals in Daisuke Miyazaki’s 
Sion Sono’s entry into Nikkatsu’s Roman Porno Reboot Project, 
The latest film from Yuki Tanada, 
Sunao Katabuchi’s award-winning animation 
Marxist countries and horror movies often do not mix. Laos has only a fledgling cinema industry and Mattie Do, returning with her second film Dearest Sister (ນ້ອງຮັກ, Nong hak), is its only female filmmaker even if she finds herself a member of an extremely small group. Set in Laos it may be, but Dearest Sister also has something of the European gothic in its instantly recognisable tale of a good country girl fetching up in the city only to be treated like a poor relation and eventually corrupted by its dubious charms. Dearest Sister is a horror movie but one which places very real fears, albeit ones imbued with superstition, at the forefront of its tragedy.
Thrillers dominate the Chinese slate beginning with:
2017 marks 20 years since the Hong Kong handover and the New York Asian Film Festival not only showcases some of the best HK films from the past two decades but also includes a look forward with work from the most promising voices of tomorrow.
A varied lineup from Japan features everything from the Roman Porno reboot to LGBT comedy, quirky sc-fi, and moving family drama.
Cyber crime, fantasy, and gentle whimsy mingle in an eclectic selection from Korea.
Casting the net wider the festival will also showcase some of the best recent hits from underrepresented areas of Asia:
Pick your poison – monsters, gangsters and love dominate the entries from Taiwan.
Only two documentaries on offer this year, both from Korea:
Back in the day, lucha libre-style wrestling was hugely popular in Japan. Tiger Mask, a manga set in the world of Japanese pro-wrestling remains a firm favourite and its eponymous hero has also become a byword for altruistic philanthropy as well-meaning anonymous donors donate expensive gifts such as Japanese school backpacks to orphanages in Tiger Mask’s name. Sadly, pro-wrestling is no longer as high-profile as it once was and has left mainstream television screens far behind even if it still maintains a small but dedicated fanbase. Kohei Taniguchi’s Dynamite Wolf (おっさんのケーフェイ, Ossan no Kefei) is out to change all that by shining a spotlight on this almost forgotten phenomenon of crazy outfits, killer moves, and camp showmanship.
Around halfway through Poolsideman (プールサイドマン), the director himself playing an overly chatty colleague of the film’s protagonist, embarks on a lengthy rant about encroaching middle-age which is instantly relatable to those who find themselves at a similar juncture. He’s sure the world seemed better when he was a child, there wasn’t all of this distress and anxiety – everything just seemed like it would go on forever but time has inexplicably sped up with a series of rapid changes packed into recent years. The life of a poolsideman is improbably intense, or at least it is for Mizuhara (Gaku Imamura) whose days are all the same but filled with tension and the low simmer of something waiting to explode. Loosely inspired by the real life case of a man who left Japan for the Middle East with the idea of joining Isis, Poolsideman wants to explore why such a surreal thing might happen but finds it all too plausible.
The festival kicks off with a screening of 
Masaharu Fukuyama stars as a jaded paparazzo rediscovering his photojournalist mojo in Hitoshi One’s oddly moving satire of the gutter press, 
Romantic dreams so often turn to nightmares, but rarely with the blood soaked fury of Keisuke Yoshida’s 
Ai Hashimoto and Aoi Miyazaki star as a mother and daughter cruelly separated by fate in Yasuhiro Yoshida’s family melodrama, 
Part one of Norihiro Koizumi’s Karuta themed drama 
A sequel to Samurai Hustle, 
Inspired by the hit TV show, Master is headed to the big screen in the 
A big winner at this year’s Japan Academy Prize, 
One of two films recently released by Nobuhiro Yamashita, 
Haruka Ayase stars in 
Comedian Yo Oizumi plays an aspiring mangaka with big dreams and possibly deluded hopes who finally discovers the power of his ordinariness during the zombie apocalypse in Shinsuke Sato’s blockbuster action/comedy 
Yoji Yamada reunites with the cast of Tokyo Family and a few more old friends for another tale of humorous family drama, 
Japan’s housing estates were once symbols of post-war aspiration but now they’re largely deserted and home only to elderly residents prepared to put up with cramped conditions, no lifts, and basic amenities. Junji Sakamoto returns with a surreal comedy satirising everything from gossipy village mentality to alien invasion in the warmhearted if wistful 
Two sisters return to their family home which is about to be torn down only to find a collection of recipes left behind by their late Taiwanese mother who died twenty years before in Mitsuhito Shiraha’s food/family drama, 
Godzilla is back and bigger than ever in Hideaki Anno & Shinji Higuchi’s 
When all the power suddenly goes off, one ordinary family is forced to flee the city in search of life on the land but how do you cope with the apocalypse when you’re used to 24hr convenience and efficient public services? Hilariously, according to Shinobu Yaguchi’s latest comedy drama, 
Another in the long line of movies focussing on samurai who fight with things other than katana, 
A sequel to the hit TV Drama, 
Lee Sang-il adapts another Shuichi Yoshida novel for three interconnected tales of doubt and suspicion following an unsolved, brutal Tokyo murder in 
Windows on Worlds 