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Known for her dark relationship dramas, including the 2017 multiple-award-winner “Dear Etranger,” Mishima Yukiko has taken a different approach with her latest film, “Two Cigarettes, Three Nights,” which is in competition at the 39th Tokyo International Film Festival. Based on a 2014 novel by Chihaya Akane, it stars Matsuoka Mayu as Kanna, a picture book […]
Keanu Reeves joined Japanese stop-motion feature “Hidari” after watching the project’s pilot film, with his team getting back to the filmmakers about a week after the screening was arranged to set up a Zoom call, director Kawamura Masashi said at the Tokyo International Film Festival, where he also updated the film’s fundraising push. Kawamura, who […]
The Santa Barbara International Film Festival has announced the recipients of the 2027 Virtuosos Award. The award acknowledges talent whose work in films has placed them at the center of the conversation around the year’s most noteworthy cinematic performances. Carrie Coon, Mariana di Girolamo, Rosalind Eleazar, Jordan Firstman, Anthony Ippolito, Jaafar Jackson, Inde Navarrette and […]
“Kuch Kuch Hota Hai,” Karan Johar’s first film as director, starring Shah Rukh Khan, Kajol and Rani Mukerji, will screen at the Edinburgh International Film Festival in 2028 to celebrate its 30th anniversary, with Johar set to attend. Johar received the invitation earlier this week at a meeting he hosted at the Mumbai offices of […]
Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof and Iranian-born Afghan director Shahrbanoo Sadat pushed back on the idea of a standalone Oscar category for exiled filmmakers, speaking at the Tokyo International Film Festival as Cate Blanchett’s Displacement Film Fund gave its first five short films their Japan premiere. The question followed the Academy’s recent rule change making exiled […]
Veteran Indian actor Shabana Azmi and film critic and historian Marco Müller are among the guests at the first Kathmandu Film Festival (KFF), which runs Oct. 30–Nov. 1 in Nepal. Launched by Kathmandu Metropolitan City, the three-day event will screen 40 films from 14 countries across several strands: the International Panorama, Nepal Panorama Shorts, a […]
Likely the strangest entry at this year’s Tokyo International Film Festival, the surreal “Kefi,” the debut feature by cinematographer Saito Kisin, mixes multiple short stories and multiple styles to make sense of the feelings around a complicated relationship with his late father. It doesn’t get there through the signifiers one might anticipate: there are aliens, […]
Shashank Walia’s “Birds in the Dark,” about a call center executive whom a police informer mistakes for a suspect, will close the 15th Dharamshala International Film Festival with its India premiere. The festival runs Oct. 29–Nov. 1 at Tibetan Children’s Village in Upper Dharamshala. Walia’s debut feature took two prizes at the Busan International Film […]
Japanese studio giant Toho’s North American release of “Godzilla Minus One” was a turning point in the company’s approach to the global market, CEO Matsuoka Hiro said at the Tokyo International Film Festival on Thursday. Matsuoka was speaking at an “Academy in Tokyo” session with Bill Kramer, CEO of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts […]
A first-time director who messaged Oscar winner Hamaguchi Ryusuke’s cinematographer directly, and a former hunter whose film led Carlos Reygadas to float a collaboration, were among five Nippon Cinema Now filmmakers who shared the unexpected connections behind their work at the 39th Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF). The “How We Make Films” panel at Tokyo […]
International distributors continue to fall for “Ulya.” The Latvian Oscar submission for Best International Feature Film has closed North America (New Mountain Films), France (Destiny), Italy (Invisible Carpet), Slovakia (ASFK), former Yugoslavia (Five Star Distribution), Estonia (Hea Film), Lithuania (GPI), MENA (Teleview), Finland (Cinema Orion), Poland (1989) and Brazil (Belas Arte). The black-and-white film, directed […]
Director Ueda Shinichiro made a name for himself with filmmaking that has embraced self-reflexivity: the beloved cult zombie film “One Cut of the Dead” was continually transforming, from a single-take horror-comedy into a meditation on the act of filmmaking and then the chaos of actually being on set. His new feature “Earthlings in Love,” showing […]
The Academy plans to keep taking the Oscars global, from recruiting members in underrepresented countries to streaming the ceremony free on YouTube, its leadership said in Tokyo, where CEO Bill Kramer said the share of members living outside the U.S. has grown from around 5% to 25% in a decade. Kramer was speaking at an […]
The Oscars will keep honoring human-driven work as AI spreads through filmmaking, Academy president Lynette Howell Taylor tells Variety in Tokyo, while the Academy’s leadership expects to keep refining the international feature rules in the first year of a new route that lets festivals qualify films. Howell Taylor, Academy CEO Bill Kramer, chief membership, impact […]
Kering Women in Motion, an allied program of the Tokyo International Film Festival, held a talk event on Tuesday at Toho Cinemas Roppongi Hills for a packed crowd. Director Kore-eda Hirokazu (“Shoplifters”) opened the event with brief remarks. “In recent years, I’ve been hearing people at international film festivals say, ‘Japanese films are really interesting […]
The opening film of the 39th Tokyo International Film Festival, Zeze Takahisa’s “Sukiyaki” tells the story of how the title tune became a worldwide hit in 1963 as well as a beloved standard that has been recorded in foreign-language versions that have also topped charts. The film goes beyond the song itself to delve into […]
“Tokyo Vice” producer Alex Boden and Netflix production policy director Deb Richards urged changes to Japan’s international production incentive at the Motion Picture Association’s annual seminar at the Tokyo International Film Festival, as the government prepares a new body to bring its scattered content-industry support under one roof. Boden, the London-based producer who spent almost […]
FIAPF’s decision to make A-list status official, with Tokyo among the 17 festivals named, is unlikely to change much about the event, according to the filmmaker leading its competition jury. Australian filmmaker Rolf de Heer, the director of “Bad Boy Bubby” and “Ten Canoes,” was asked at the 39th Tokyo International Film Festival’s jury press […]
Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s buzzy Elizabeth Holmes doc “You Can See Everything” is set to launch into Italy from the Torino Film Festival with the directors expected in tow. After world premiering in the U.S. at Telluride, and segueing to the New York Film Festival, the doc, which offers an intimate look at the […]
Japanese auteur and Cannes regular Naomi Kawase will preside over the main competition jury of the upcoming Doha Film Festival which is set to run Nov. 19-27 in the Qatari capital. Japan’s best-known female film director, Kawase has a close rapport with the Doha Film Institute, having joined its Qumra program mentoring emerging filmmakers in […]
