Tokyo Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val cel­e­brates the next gen­er­a­tion of Japan­ese film­mak­ing talent

Tokyo Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val cur­rent­ly isn’t a name that comes to mind when think­ing of the major glob­al cin­e­ma events. Europe and North Amer­i­ca leave Asian fes­ti­vals feel­ing like small-change affairs by com­par­i­son, often ignored in the minds of all but the local res­i­dents with access to the films being show­cased. It’s a shame, since such events typ­i­cal­ly high­light local cin­e­ma beyond a mere regur­gi­ta­tion of the Cannes and fes­ti­val favorites for any giv­en year, offer­ing them a unique flair.

The Tokyo Film Fes­ti­val has been under­go­ing a series of reforms aimed at uplift­ing its sta­tus and pres­tige with­in the fes­ti­val cir­cuit since COVID shift­ed the goal­posts. A new base of oper­a­tions in flashy Gin­za, a new pro­gram­ming direc­tor look­ing to uplift the stan­dard of films, along­side becom­ing the first Asian fes­ti­val to sign the pledge for gen­der par­i­ty, are a sig­nal of intent: this isn’t just Japan’s pre­mière film fes­ti­val, but one the world should pay atten­tion to.

Does its line­up deliv­er these lofty goals? Well, on the gen­der par­i­ty point it failed bad­ly – just three of the 15 com­pe­ti­tion films were direct­ed by women. In terms of qual­i­ty it’s a step in the right direc­tion, with a slate of unique world pre­mieres that show­case the val­ue of region­al fes­ti­vals high­light­ing local cin­e­ma on a world stage.

It was still the crit­i­cal­ly-acclaimed films from Cannes (Out of Com­pe­ti­tion film The Beasts from direc­tor Rodri­go Soro­goyen took Best Film, Best Direc­tor and Best Actor for Denis Méno­chet at Tokyo) and Venice (World War III direct­ed by Houman Seye­di took the Spe­cial Jury Prize) that took the top prizes at the event. Inter­na­tion­al Com­pe­ti­tion offer­ings showed a gen­er­ous slate of future clas­sics, from Ashkal – a slow-burn hor­ror on police cor­rup­tion with a haunt­ing final scene – and a sin­is­ter por­tray­al of rela­tion­ships gone wrong in Manticore.

Yet it was the Japan­ese films both in and out of com­pe­ti­tion that gave a plat­form to a gen­er­a­tion of Japan­ese tal­ent wait­ing to be cel­e­brat­ed beyond the noise of the same few names reg­u­lar­ly trot­ted out beyond Japan’s borders.

One Japan­ese com­pe­ti­tion film to win an award at the event was for a vet­er­an of the fes­ti­val, as direc­tor Rikiya Imaizu­mi took home the audi­ence award for By The Win­dow. Rather than a typ­i­cal sto­ry of a man pro­cess­ing the affair of his wife while becom­ing clos­er with a writer them­selves, it approach­es the sub­ject in a mat­ter-of-fact man­ner that leaves a lot to sur­prise over its per­haps-too-long run­time. It’s a film doing a lot with a lit­tle, and strong dia­logue pon­tif­i­cat­ing on the emo­tion­al strength of both its main char­ac­ters and every­one else in this web of rela­tion­ships car­ry­ing the feature.

While intrigu­ing, it’s still hard not to view this as a safe, rather con­ven­tion­al Japan­ese dra­ma with a bit of whim­sy for the main­stream. On the oth­er hand, Moun­tain Woman by Ainu Mosir direc­tor Takeshi Fuku­na­ga, proved an enthralling and unique peri­od film lean­ing heav­i­ly both into socio-polit­i­cal com­men­tary on the role of women in Japan­ese soci­ety both then and now and the inter­sec­tion between clas­si­cal spir­i­tu­al­i­ty and bru­tal real­i­ty. It was also unafraid to show the bleak real­i­ties often glossed over, open­ing on a new­born baby being mur­dered because anoth­er mouth to feed is too much for their famine-impact­ed village.

Yet it was Daishi Matsunaga’s Ego­ist and the beau­ti­ful per­for­mances from its lead stars Ryohei Suzu­ki and Hio Miyaza­wa that I can’t help feel was more deserv­ing of recog­ni­tion. An unapolo­getic gay romance (here between a fash­ion edi­tor and his per­son­al train­er) is rare in Japan­ese cin­e­ma, and even out­side the coun­try is rarely cap­tured and por­trayed with this much vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and sen­su­al­i­ty for the sheer joy of skin­ship and con­nec­tion. Suzu­ki is hard­ly a new­com­er, yet rarely has he appeared so vul­ner­a­ble on screen, and even as the film threat­ens to bury its gays, it deliv­ers a sto­ry on the pow­er of their love that per­se­veres and takes new form with­out a dry eye left in the theater.

Both of these lat­ter films offer some­thing that defies the nar­row box of mod­ern-day slow-paced dra­ma on fam­i­ly and sta­tus that Japan­ese cin­e­ma is typ­i­cal­ly type­cast with­in. Peri­od fea­tures rarely feel as con­fronta­tion­al or inti­mate as Moun­tain Woman, nor are Japan­ese films typ­i­cal­ly con­sid­ered as queer and lov­ing as Ego­ist. And this is just to talk about the com­pe­ti­tion line­up, with an Out of Com­pe­ti­tion slate of Japan­ese films that ele­vate them­selves beyond even these.

Bar Fuku­na­ga, the oth­er direc­tors and actors fea­tured in com­pe­ti­tion rep­re­sent an inter­na­tion­al­ly under-appre­ci­at­ed old guard rather than a new gen­er­a­tion of tal­ent. It’s new­com­er direc­tors break­ing the rules, show­cas­ing the poten­tial for a new group of cre­ators cre­at­ing in the vein of One Cut of the Dead and We Are Lit­tle Zom­bies – rather than Ozu and Kuro­sawa – that left me most excited.

Brats, Be Ambi­tious is a per­fect exam­ple. The Nip­pon Cin­e­ma Now selec­tion was designed by the fes­ti­val as a show­case of the mod­ern land­scape of Japan­ese cin­e­ma, and no film cap­tured this quite like this. Direc­tor Adachi Shin has indus­try expe­ri­ence writ­ing films like 100 Yen Love but is rel­a­tive­ly inex­pe­ri­enced as a direc­tor. Yet his take on a Stand By Me-like com­ing of age sto­ry tack­ling the cusp of ado­les­cence, bro­ken homes, fam­i­ly sep­a­ra­tions, abuse and more, is suc­cess­ful because, at its core, these are kids act­ing and expe­ri­enc­ing the world around them like kids.

This is a sto­ry from the per­spec­tive of a child, so it’s refresh­ing to see the lengths they went to retain this youth­ful per­spec­tive. Indul­gent mul­ti-minute long-takes are fre­quent and take us excit­ed­ly across town on bikes to meet friends with reck­less child­hood ener­gy, weav­ing in and out of rag­tag homes and nar­row streets with reck­less aban­don. Yet these same long takes also allow for raw emo­tion true to the pain of falling out or rec­on­cil­ing with a friend, with­out pause because who knows how you tell a friend you care for them at the age of 12. Child­ish emo­tions rush to the sur­face and it’s messy, because that’s child­hood, isn’t it?

And the cit­ed influ­ence for these long takes accord­ing to the direc­tor in a post-film Q&A? The unavoid­able influ­ence of indie suc­cess sto­ry One Cut of the Dead.

Which brings us to i ai, a film I’d proud­ly cham­pi­on above any oth­er at the event. Why take inspi­ra­tion from film at all, if your aim is to cap­ture music’s impact? Raw musi­cal emo­tion is best cap­tured by a musi­cian, and this is a tale that uses the emo­tions put into every chord in live music to weave a won­der­ful fourth wall-break­ing art piece about what it means to love and grieve, and the pow­er of music to bring words and sound to the inde­scrib­able. We begin in the cin­e­ma as we view the blank screen with the cast, ques­tion­ing what we’re about to see before a sin­gle word is uttered, in a clear request to con­sid­er this reflec­tion of life against your own.

Direc­tor Mahi­To The Peo­ple comes not from the world of cin­e­ma but from activist music group GEZAN, and his calls for action to reject a pas­sive approach to the media we hear and under­stand its true impact on the world comes from the mind of some­one who has seen the impact his work has had on oth­ers first-hand. When you need some­one in your life they will be there but you can’t stand and let it idly pass you by, so you need to act, even after the end cred­its roll, in one of the most mov­ing end­ing sequences in years.

We hawk over the minu­ti­ae of line­ups and films from the likes of Cannes, Toron­to and Venice to the point we some­times lose sight of what region­al fes­ti­vals can offer. Tokyo Film Fes­ti­val may have larg­er plans and a long jour­ney to reach its lofty goals, but this year’s event show­cas­es the val­ue hav­ing a fes­ti­val like this on the world stage offers. While the inter­na­tion­al image of Japan­ese cin­e­ma remains dom­i­nat­ed by the image of auteurs from decades ago (indeed, with a Kuro­sawa award and clos­ing on Oliv­er Her­manus’ Liv­ing which remakes his 1954 film Ikiru, he remains a tow­er­ing pres­ence), a fes­ti­val mak­ing an effort to high­light the best of its youth­ful next gen­er­a­tion on a world stage should be celebrated.