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Madrid-based distributor Atalante is ramping up its heritage cinema titles in Spain, where it’s set to release Vera Chytilová’s 1966 Czechoslovakian dark comedy “Daisies” and Kavery Kaul’s 1988 calypso music documentary “One Hand Don’t Clap.”

“Daises,” which Atalante is releasing in November, “is maybe one of the most iconic modern European films that we are very proud to put in theaters,” Atalante CEO Ramiro Ledo Cordeiro told Variety at the Lumière Film Festival’s International Classic Film Market (Mifc) in Lyon, France.

While the company had previously released one or two heritage films a year, 2024 saw an extraordinary number of releases, Ledo added.

Indeed, Atalante’s releases this year included the 4K restoration by Toho of Yasujiro Ozu’s 1950 Japanese drama “The Munekata Sisters,” which premiered last year in Cannes; the new restoration of Martha Coolidge’s 1975 U.S. drama “Not a Pretty Picture,” a reconstruction of sexual...

While writing his upcoming “Superman” film, James Gunn adopted a dog that changed his life — and also the movie’s script.

Gunn revealed on X that Krypto, the super-dog owned by Clark Kent/Superman, will appear in the film arriving next summer. And yes, the pooch will have superpowers.

“Krypto was inspired by our dog Ozu, who we adopted shortly after I started writing ‘Superman,'” Gunn wrote on the former Twitter.

Gunn did not invent Krypto the Superdog, he’s just the first to bring the pup to a live-action film. Krypto is a DC comics staple and even had his own animated TV series “Krypto the Superdog” (2005-2006) on Cartoon Network. Krypto also appeared in 2022’s “DC’s League of Superpets” and was voiced by Dwayne Johnson. We don’t think Krypto will be a talking dog in “Superman” — that would probably be the single weirdest way for...

While in New York City to celebrate the 10th anniversary of her monster international hit “The Babadook,” Australian writer/director Jennifer Kent took a stop over at the Criterion Closet and proved that she not only enjoys making spooky movies — she likes watching them too. Her first pick of the shelf was one of the first films of the horror genre, the 1922 silent essay piece “Haxän: Witchcraft Through the Ages.” Kent described the film as “a huge inspiration for ‘Babadook.'”

She added, “It’s about the devil and about witchcraft, it’s also about women going nuts. Fantastic.”

Kent’s next selection was from her home country, Peter Weir’s 1977 mystery “The Last Wave,” which she’d initially avoided watching because she misconstrued the title.

“I’m embarrassed to say, I thought it was a film about surfing. It’s not a film about surfing,” said Kent. “It’s...

In 2007, Mihai Malaimare Jr. was a 29-year-old cinematographer working in Romania when he got his filmmaking dream job: shooting “Youth Without Youth” for Francis Ford Coppola as Coppola returned to the director’s chair for the first time in 10 years. Coppola wanted to reinvent himself and was looking for a partner who wouldn’t be afraid of trying new things, and in Malaimare, he found a willing and eager co-conspirator. “Even when he had what I thought was a crazy idea, I thought, ‘Well, it’s Francis Coppola so I better try it,'” Malaimare told IndieWire. “Then you try it and realize how much better the scene looks.”

Malaimare became Coppola’s cinematographer of choice on the movies that followed: “Tetro,” “Twixt,” and now “Megalopolis,” all of them self-financed experiments with which Coppola has attempted to find his own unique style after over 60 years of filmmaking. On “Megalopolis,” Coppola...

For Kevin Haefelin‘s latest creative endeavor, he brings viewers to feudal Japan in a very short but funny ghost story with “Third Wheel.” Having already directed a variety of shorts ranging from serious to comical, Haefelin takes the sensitive topic of the death of a loved one and puts his own playful spin on the Japanese connection with the supernatural. Shot in Kyoto, Japan, with a script written by Hikari Honodera, the versatile director brings his idea to life through a production conducted with Shochiku.

Our short tale is set in feudal Japan, in a Kyoto town. Gohei, a master carpenter, dies suddenly, leaving behind his wife, Sachi. Now, he roams as a ghost and wishes to make peace with his grief-stricken spouse. To make this possible, he turns to his once-neglected apprentice Sakichi, who has psychic abilities.

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Japan is one country in focus at the Venice Production Bridge, with Wallonia-Brussels & Luxembourg also under the spotlight. Projects with Japanese directors, producers and backers, in various combinations, can be found in both, however.

These projects will participate in the Vpb’s Venice Gap-Financing Market (Aug. 30-Sept. 1), whose selected projects must have 70% of their financing secured. To find the missing 30%, filmmakers and producers will have one-on-one meetings with decision-makers, from financiers to post-production houses.

Also under the Vpb aegis is the Book Adaptation Rights Market (Aug. 30-Sept. 1). Thirty international publishing houses and literary agencies will participate, as will two Japanese publishers as part of Focus Japan with the support of Japan External Trade Organization.

Vpb selects two focuses for each edition, one European and one international. A big reason Japan landed the latter slot, says Vpb head Pascal Diot, is that Japan and Italy have recently signed a film co-production agreement.

Megalopolis director Francis Ford Coppola has joined Letterboxd, the social cataloguing service where members can rate and review films and keep track of what they’ve watched. I’m a little addicted. Coppola has shared a list of twenty films that he would recommend to any cinephile or aspiring filmmaker, which you can check out below.

French Cancan (Jean Renoir) The Bad Sleep Well (Akira Kurosawa) The Bitter Tea of General Yen (Frank Capra) Shanghai Express (Josef von Sternberg) The Awful Truth (Leo McCarey) The Ladies Man (Jerry Lewis) The Burmese Harp (Kon Ichikawa) Tokyo Story (Yasujirō Ozu) The Last Laugh (F.W. Murnau) The Blue Angel (Josef von Sternberg) Splendor in the Grass (Elia Kazan) Punch Drunk Love (Paul Thomas Anderson) Empire of the Sun (Steven Spielberg) Sunrise (F.W. Murnau) Joyless Street (G.W. Pabst) A Place in the Sun (George Stevens) The King of Comedy (Martin Scorsese) After...

John Woo was once known as the master of action cinema. His knack for beautifully crafted and stylized violence made him an international sensation with hits like The Killer (1989) and Hard Boiled before making the leap to Hollywood with Hard Target. His impact on the genre is undeniable, but following the critically panned, Ben Affleck-starring Paycheck the filmmaker went back to his Hong Kong roots and left the world of Hollywood behind him for two decades.

He returned to American audiences last year with the dialogue-free, Christmas-themed Silent Night — a film that I personally loved but that faced a rocky reception from most — and again in 2024 with The Killer, a remake of his ’89 classic. It’s always an interesting choice when a filmmaker remakes one of their own movies. Yasujiro Ozu remade his film A Story of Floating Weeds, and the second attempt is arguably the superior film; however,...

Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid is now available in the Criterion Collection.

Sam Peckinpah is extremely relevant to my evolution as a cinephile. Straw Dogs was the first Criterion Release I ever owned, given to me as a birthday gift many years ago by a film-loving friend who introduced me to many important films I might not have seen otherwise. I was captivated by the film’s brutality and depth. These are themes that define most Peckinpah films and part of what makes him such a controversial, yet important, filmmaker. Surprisingly, this was my first viewing of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. Unsurprisingly, it delivered exactly what I wanted from a gritty 70’s western directed by one of the strongest auteurs of his time.

Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid plot

When Pat Garrett (James Coburn) takes on the role of Sheriff, he’s tasked with bringing in...

The family drama is something of a stable within the Japanese film industry, with a long tradition and many big names as well as legitimate masterpieces attached to it. Similar to other cultures, the family drama is far more than a culmination of conflicts within a community of people, but rather a reflection of the political, economic and cultural challenges within a country. Directors such as Hirokazu Koreeda, whose career is basically founded on the perfection of the genre, have created works dealing with traditional family values being questioned because of various trends and developments. Based on an original work by author Akiko Shimoju, director Okayama Chikako wants to aim for similar acclaim with her adaptation of “Disease of Family”, telling the story of three families and their way of facing a particularly taxing obstacle.

Disease of Family is screening at Japan FilmFest Hamburg

“Disease of Family” starts with the story of Fujita,...

Wim Wenders will be a special guest of Italy’s Cinema Ritrovato Festival dedicated to cinematic treasures of the past where a freshly restored copy of his “A Trick of the Light” (“Die Gebrüder Skladanowsky”), which pays tribute to forgotten pioneers of the moving image, will have its world premiere.

Shot by Wenders with a group of students from the Munich Film Academy in 1995 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of cinema, the film is about the origins of cinema and its German inventors: the Skladanowsky brothers who On Nov. 1, 1895, presented a show of eight film loops at Berlin’s Wintergarten, six weeks before the more famous Lumiere freres’ exhibition in Paris.

“A Trick of the Light” uses stylistic devices from silent cinema, including a hand-cranked camera from the 1920s that produces 16 frames per second. The film’s score by French composer Laurent Petitgand also pays homage to the silent film era.

Welcome to Global Breakouts, Deadline’s fortnightly strand in which we shine a spotlight on the TV shows and films killing it in their local territories. The industry is as globalized as it’s ever been, but breakout hits are appearing in pockets of the world all the time and it can be hard to keep track. So we’re going to do the hard work for you.

This week, we head to Thailand and take a peak at a stirring, emotional film. How To Make Millions Before Grandma Dies has broken box office records around Southeast Asia, with audiences lapping up the soulful tear-jerker and TikTok playing quite the role.

Name: How To Make Millions Before Grandma Dies

Country: Thailand

Producer: Gdh

International sales: WME Independent

Distribution: Southeast Asia, China, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Anz

For fans of: The Farewell, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s films

When Thai filmmaker Pat Boonnitipat...

Vincenzo Natali's 1997 film "Cube" takes place entirely inside a strange, unexplained high-tech ... prison ... of some sort. It is constructed of cube-shaped cells with hatches on all four walls, the floor, and the ceiling. Each hatch leads into an identical cell, only distinguished by its colored lights and a series of cryptic numbers etched into the doorways. Random cells throughout the structure are armed with deadly booby-traps. There are no bathrooms, no food, and no water. Six strangers find each other in this prison wearing identical jumpsuits, unsure how they arrived there or why they have been imprisoned. They slowly begin to decipher the numbers to determine which rooms have traps and which ones do not. Naturally, they all slowly begin to go mentally deteriorate.

"Cube" was produced for a modest $350,000 (Canadian), but its intriguing "Twilight Zone" premise and taut direction allowed it to catch on as a cult hit.

The 23rd edition of the Transilvania International Film Festival, kicked off Friday night with a sold-out screening of Dogman, the canine-focused revenge thriller by the French veteran Luc Besson, with Dogman co-star Jojo T. Gibbs in attendance.

Some 3,500 viewers backed Unirii Square in Cluj-Napoca for the start of the 11-day festival, which runs through June 24. The biggest film extravaganza in Romania, the festival is one of the premier events on the Eastern European industry calendar, with more than 200 films, exhibitions, concerts, talks and special events scheduled, and around 1,000 industry professionals expected.

Alongside Jojo T. Gibbs, most recently seen in Alex Garland’s Civil War, the TIFF guest list this year includes Italian filmmaker Daniele Luchetti (The Yes Man), who will be honored with the festival’s special award for contribution to world cinema; and Romanian film and theater legend Catrinel Dumitrescu (Aurora), who will receive the excellence award at the closing gala on June 22nd.

The recent fast diffusion of Artificial Intelligence functions in many aspects of our life has unlocked several potential benefits. However, it has also generated a series of concerns and fears of replacing very human characteristics, especially in creative fields such as art and poetry and in other personal and intimate aspects of life such as love and relationships. The 7-minute short film “AI Love You” is a playful and yet acute reflection about this very contemporary debate.

AI Love You is screening at Short Shorts Film Festival and Asia

In a very near future, a young couple is about to have lunch with the parents of the woman. They have been dating for a while, about 5 years, but this lunch yields a special significance as the man (Tokio Emoto) is about to ask permission of his partner's parents to marry her; consequently, they are very nervous, especially the man, of course.

A Story of Floating Weeds / Floating Weeds: Two Films by Yasujiro Ozu on Blu-ray released to the Criterion Collection on May 7th, 2024.

This marked only my third and forth film by Yasujiro Ozu. I already owned the Criterion Collection releases of Tokyo Story and Good Morning, both of which I thoroughly enjoyed, with Good Morning instantly becoming one of my favorite experiences with Japanese cinema. Part of what makes the Criterion Collection so great is the way it makes important films easily accessible for collectors.

A Story of Floating Weeds / Floating Weeds: Two Films by Yasujiro Ozu Plot

An actor traveling with a theater group set up shop in a small village where he reconnects with an old lover and his estranged son. Emotions boil over as the former lovers rekindle their romantic flame.

The Critique

Floating Weeds

It’s always interesting when a filmmaker remakes one of their own films.

Japanese Girls at the Harbor.In 1924, Hiroshi Shimizu, the 21-year-old son of a wealthy businessman, dropped his studies at an agricultural school in Hokkaido and moved to Tokyo to pursue his interest in filmmaking. The Japanese industry was in a state of flux, moving away from the jidaigeki, or period dramas, and towards gendaigeki, films about contemporary life: slapstick, romantic, and sport-themed comedies; crime films; and its trademark, shōshimin-eiga, social dramas concerned with working and middle class life.One of the major forces of this change was Shochiku, the studio where Shimizu landed a job, first as an assistant director, and then in 1925 as a full-fledged director. Under the leadership of Shiro Kido, an ambitious young executive, Shochiku was establishing itself as a distinctly modern film studio within a major metropolis. Tokyo was in the midst of a growth spurt, with urban sprawl accelerating and multitudes of people migrating from the countryside.

The program of the 24th Japanese Film Festival Nippon Connection is complete! From May 28 to June 2, the festival offers the opportunity to delve into Japan's film and cultural scene. The festival presents around 100 short and feature-length films at eight venues, including numerous premieres. Over 60 filmmakers and artists will travel from Japan to Frankfurt am Main, Germany, to present their works to the audience. At the freely accessible grounds of the festival centers Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm and Produktionshaus Naxos, visitors can enjoy the festival atmosphere with a large Japanese market featuring numerous food and craft stands. Detailed information and tickets for all films and events are available at NipponConnection.com.

This year's film selection promises exciting discoveries. Fans of genre films can enjoy Shinji Araki's acclaimed time-loop thriller Penalty Loop, Kaz I Kiriya's apocalyptic drama From The End Of The World, and Shimako Sato's action-packed fantasy adventure The Yin Yang Master Zero.

Mubi Picks at Posteritati is a series in which we invite our favorite artists to the prestigious movie art gallery in New York City to discuss their favorite movie posters of all time.Hot on the heels of his debut feature, Dogleg (2023), Al Warren joins us at Posteritati to share his love for the posters of Yasujiro Ozu, Robert Altman, David Lynch, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder.Dogleg is now showing exclusively on Mubi in the United States and Canada.

Floating Clouds.In the opening scene of Mikio Naruse’s Floating Clouds (1956), a group of repatriated Japanese civilians disembarks from a shabby boat. After two brief wide shots, Naruse cuts to a medium shot to introduce the film’s protagonist, Yukiko, singling her out from what is otherwise a crowd of anonymous faces. But the film’s screenplay elaborates on those who walk alongside Yukiko: Returnees from South Asia are getting off the ship. Among the crowd of women, which consists only of comfort women, geishas, nurses, typists, clerks and the like, there is also Kõda Yukiko, who is not outfitted with proper winter attire.“Comfort women” is a name given to women and girls forced into sexual slavery at the hands of the Japanese Imperial Army. According to Yoko Mizuki’s screenplay, some are present in the crowd, but it is impossible for the viewer to discern them. The...

Floating Weeds Sitting inside his Tokyo home, surrounded by stacks of books and photos of John Ford and Jean-Luc Godard pinned to the wall, the venerated film and literary critic, writer, and scholar Shiguéhiko Hasumi admitted with a wry smile that he was not really in the mood to talk about Ozu. We were gathered for an interview about a new English translation of his book Directed by Yasujiro Ozu, but he had old Hollywood on his mind. As he spoke, he switched between Japanese and French-accented English. “This book was written 40 years ago,” he said. “My last monograph is about John Ford. And this is my latest book. I greatly admire the films of Don Siegel.” He pointed to What is a Shot?. “So, I am so far from Ozu.” Indeed, Hasumi, who turns 88 this month, remains prolific. Spread out on the coffee table in front of him by...

While it was fascinating to see the results of the 2022 Sight & Sound poll, we’re just as curious to see what lies outside the established canon. As part of a comprehensive project at the essential resource They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They?, Ángel González polled nearly 839 critics on the best films that didn’t receive a single vote on the Sight & Sound poll, which they’ve now compiled into a massive Beyond the Sight & Sound Canon, which initially features 1,030 films but expands to a whopping 14,558 total films.

As a preview, we’ve collected the films that received at least 20 votes in this new poll, which is 263. It’s led by Spike Jonze’s Her, and they’ve also noted the directors that were most represented. Fritz Lang leads the pack with eight films mentioned, while François Truffaut has seven, and Anthony Mann, Clint Eastwood, Eric Rohmer, John Ford, Samuel Fuller,...

To mark the centenary of Yasujiro Ozu's birth, Hou Hsiao-Hsien made his own Tokyo story, “Café Lumière,” a film with Hou's individuality, but full of subtle nuances in tribute to the Japanese master. The family drama gets a modern-day setting, with cultural change seen across the generations.

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Yoko (Taiwanese-Japanese musician Yo Hitoto) is a journalist who switches her time between Tokyo and Taiwan. Researching Taiwanese composer Wen-Ye Jiang, she seeks out a cafe the composer frequented when based in Tokyo. And in tribute to Ozu, who favored dialogue over story, that is about that in terms of plot.

Family and its changing nature is a theme hinted at throughout, with Yoko being pregnant by her boyfriend in Taiwan. However, she has a somewhat blasé attitude towards the pregnancy, and indeed her boyfriend; unconcerned as to whether she sees him again,...

Since the beginning of his career, Hirokazu Koreeda became recognized for his films representing the family cinema genre—intrinsically linked with the favorite of Western critics among Japanese filmmakers: Yasujiro Ozu. This was already the case with Koreeda's 1995 debut film, “Maboroshi no hikari”, a visual meditation on loss and the passing of time, told through the eyes of a single mother who has just lost her beloved husband. Since the early 1960s and the death of Yasujiro Ozu, Western critics seemed to be engaged in an excruciating quest to find a new ancestor to Ozu's poetics of cinema—and finally, there was one; Koreeda became the new Ozu.

The similarity is there—a contemplative approach towards the mundane which translates to something more transcendental; a patient gaze onto the bonds of the family set against the backdrop of a modernizing world and changing traditions; or a talent to put...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. To keep up with our latest features, sign up for the Weekly Edit newsletter and follow us @mubinotebook.Newsa Different Man.IATSE, Teamsters, and the Hollywood Basic Crafts unions began bargaining jointly with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers after a thousands-strong rally in Los Angeles. In Variety, IATSE president Matthew Loeb discusses the union’s priorities and the threat of another strike after the current contract expires on July 31.In an open letter, Carlo Chatrian, the outgoing artistic director of the Berlinale, and Mark Peranson, the festival’s head of programming, respond to the backlash that followed the closing ceremony, at which a number of award recipients called for a ceasefire in Gaza: “This year’s festival was a place for dialogue and exchange for ten days; yet once the films stopped rolling, another form of communication...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For regular updates, sign up for our weekly email newsletter and follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSHard Truths.Mike Leigh’s forthcoming Hard Truths will reunite him with Marianne Jean-Baptiste, star of Secrets and Lies (1996). It will be the British director’s first film set in the present day since Another Year (2010).Jia Zhangke has divulged some details of We Shall Be All, now in the early stages of post-production. In production off and on since 2001, the film will be his first feature since Ash Is Purest White (2018). “I travelled with actors and a cameraman to shoot, without a script, without any obvious story,” the director told Variety. “This is a work of fiction, but I have applied many documentary methods.”Robert Bresson’s rarely seen Four Nights of a Dreamer is being restored by MK2 Films, set for a spring release.

The family/social drama has always been a staple within the Japanese film industry with directors such as Yasujiro Ozu or Kenji Mozoguchi having shaped it during the course of their career. At the same time, while delving into family issues, these directors have taken a lesson from early works within the cinematic landscape of their culture as well as Italien Neo-realism, adding “a slice of life” to their works. In the last couple of years perhaps no other director has influenced (and to certain extent perfected) this formula than Hirokazu Koreeda. His debut feature “Maborosi” already showed the family as a mirror image of a society caught in between tradition and progress, family values and individualism. With his fourth feature “Nobody Knows”, inspired by a true case, Koreeda would not only reach international fame, but also manifest his take on the aforementioned formula which many have copied (or tried to) over the years.

As you go through the whole filmography of directors such as Yasujiro Ozu, you start to notice a certain pattern, not only in terms of the visual style but also considering elements of the story. The concept of marriage is, most of the time, when collisions and arguments start to erupt within the family unit, signifying the chasm within Japanese post-war society and some underlying issues in a conformist culture which, to this day, have not been fully resolved. In “Tokyo Twilight”, possibly one of his bleakest features stylistically and narratively, Ozu again shows the family as a mirror of society, its contradictions, regrets and guilt, posing the question of where the culture is headed and whether freedom and independence will bring the solution people wish for.

Tokyo Twilight is screening at Japan Society as part of the Family Portrait program

Shukichi Sugiyama (Chishu Ryu) is a respected employee in a Tokyo bank.

The Criterion Collection follows an auteur-based diet of cinema, offering a wondrous variety of films from all over the world to sate your appetite. Case in point, consider what May 2024 will bring from the home video label. (All verbiage courtesy of Criterion.) "Three Revolutionary Films by Ousmane Sembène, three powerful 1970s works by the trailblazing Senegalese auteur; Anatomy of a Fall, Justine Triet's masterful examination of the line between truth and fiction; and Girlfight, Karyn Kusama's singular tale of a young woman's path to self-realization. "Plus: a Blu-ray upgrade of A Story of Floating Weeds / Floating Weeds: Two Films by Yasujiro Ozu, a silent classic from one of cinema's greatest directors alongside his color remake, and Peeping Tom, Michael Powell's still-shocking masterpiece of...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

“The last thing I hate is that life always forces us to keep moving forwards.”

In the aftermath of the New York Film Festival, reporter Vincent Canby wrote an article about the films of the festival he aptly named “Why Some Films Don't Travel Well”. Works such as Zhang Yimou's “Red Sorghum”, Andrei Konchalovsky's “Asya's Happiness” and Hou Hsiao-Hsien's “Daughter of the Nile” are mostly relevant thanks to their “sociology factor” Canby begins his article, an aspect that these works are and have been applauded for around the world while as films themselves they are not that interesting. Hou Hsiao-Hien, one of the most popular directors of Taiwanese New Cinema along with Edward Yang, was still trying to find a cinematic language for his films, one which strongly resembled the works of Yasujiro Ozu in terms of style and content, the sense of resignation, as he writes...

Wim Wenders, the director of the Oscar-nominated Perfect Days on Hirayama’s (Kôji Yakusho) big lesson for his niece Niko (Arisa Nakano): “Come on, start living in the now. Now is now and then is then.” Photo: Master Mind Ltd.

On Tuesday, Wim Wenders' Perfect Days (co-written with Takuma Takasaki and starring Cannes Film Festival Best Actor winner Kôji Yakusho) received a Best International Feature Oscar nomination. Wenders has three Best Documentary Feature Oscar nominations:

Wim Wenders with Anne-Katrin Titze on using Yasujirō Ozu’s 3:4 format for Perfect Days and Anselm: “I got so much attached to it.”

In the second instalment with Wim Wenders we discuss the Yasujirō Ozu format and Cinemascope; Ts Eliot’s Little Gidding and returns to the...

Presented by the Agency for Cultural Affairs, Government of Japan, and Japan Society

February 15-24, 2024 at Japan Society

and partner venues in NYC

New York, NY – Agency for Cultural Affairs, Government of Japan and Japan Society are proud to announce the eighth installment of the Aca Cinema Project film series – Family Portrait: Japanese Family in Flux – an ongoing initiative fostered by the Government of Japan to increase awareness and appreciation of Japanese films and filmmakers in the United States. The Aca Cinema Project has presented events in both New York and LA since 2021, and its upcoming edition will showcase over nine contemporary and classic films from February 15-24, 2024 all with the central theme of the modern family. The bonds of the Japanese family are often revered in the West, and this series will both celebrate these traditions as well as call into question their reality and relevance in our quickly changing modern world.

While in England, German director Wim Wenders was sandwiched between a press tour and a brief lunch when a member of his team walked into the restaurant to secretly signal across the room that he was nominated for his first feature film Oscar with Japan’s Best International Feature Film, Perfect Days. “Someone came in raising their thumb, which was the sign that we had agreed on, and no word was spoken because there were too many guests in the restaurant,” Wenders laughed while retelling the Tuesday nomination. “So, I knew then I could let that meal go a little cold. It was lovely because I had prepared myself to not expect anything. I had completely prepared myself to not be on the list so that I wouldn’t be disappointed. So [this nomination] was quite a surprise today.”

The film Perfect Days, co-written and directed by Wenders, tells the story of...

Veteran German director Wim Wenders broke new ground during the Oscar nominations on Tuesday morning when he was nominated for his Japanese-language drama Perfect Days in the best international feature category.

This isn’t Wenders’ first Oscars rodeo. The 78-year-old German director has three Academy Award nominations to his name but all have come in the best documentary category. He was nominated in 2000 for the music doc Buena Vista Social Club about aging Cuban street musicians; in 2012 for Pina, a groundbreaking 3D documentary tribute to the work of legendary dance choreographer Pina Bausch; and in 2015 for The Salt of the Earth, a portrait of famed Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado, co-directed with Salgado’s son, Juliano Ribeiro Salgado. Perfect Days does, however, mark Wenders’ first-ever Oscar nomination for a drama.

“It’s a bit ironic to be nominated for a Japanese-language film but at the same time a great honor for...

Turner Classic Movies has picked up the exclusive North American television rights to the forthcoming documentary The Ozu Diaries, from Oscar-nominated filmmaker Daniel Raim. An intimate exploration of the life and legacy of Japanese cinematic master Yasujiro Ozu, the film will premiere on the festival circuit this year, followed by a theatrical release in 2025.

Produced with the support of the Ozu estate and Shochiku, the historic Japanese studio behind the director’s greatest works, The Ozu Diaries is a cinema history documentary that portrays the iconic filmmaker through his diaries, personal letters and interviews, plus rare archival footage, movie clips and new insights from some of his closest collaborators.

The project was initiated in 2023 to mark the 120th anniversary of Ozu’s birth. The movie will trace his journey from a rebellious young painter and cinephile in 1920s Japan to the globally renowned creator of classics like I Was Born,...

One of George Lucas' primary influences when making "Star Wars" was Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, who is generally considered his country's best director aside from maybe Yasujirō Ozu. Whereas Ozu is famous for making domestic comedies and dramas, Kurosawa made movies that felt epic: samurai movies, noir thrillers ("High & Low"), and Shakespearean stories translated into his homeland's history ("Throne of Blood").

This may be one reason why "Star Wars" is popular in Japan. If you don't believe the box office, look at Japanese pop culture; anime cornerstones like "Gundam" owe a debt to Lucas. One Japanese "Star Wars" fan is Hiromu Arakawa, the manga artist most famous for creating "Fullmetal Alchemist." (Arakawa is not shy about expressing her opinions on the "Star Wars" films either.)

Set in a world where alchemy is more than just a pseudoscience, "Fullmetal Alchemist" primarily follows two brothers, Edward and Alphonse Elric, who search far...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For regular updates, sign up for our weekly email newsletter and follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSDry Leaf.On Criterion’s Daily, David Hudson has shared a useful roundup of films that might be expected to premiere during 2024. Among the inclusions are: Mickey 17, Bong Joon-ho’s first film since Parasite (2019); It’s Not Me, Leos Carax’s latest collaboration with Denis Lavant; and Dry Leaf, the enticing-sounding new film by Alexandre Koberidze (What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? [2021]), which is said to be about “a photographer who shoots soccer stadiums [who] goes missing.”A list of international filmmakers including Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Pedro Costa, Radu Jude, Ira Sachs, Claire Denis, and Abderrahmane Sissako have signed a letter, published during the holiday season in the French newspaper Libération, demanding (as translated by the Film Stage) “an immediate end to the bombings on Gaza,...

The British Film Institute (BFI) will present English director Christopher Nolan with its highest honor, the BFI Fellowship, in recognition of the Oppenheimer filmmaker’s “extraordinary achievements and enormous contribution to cinema,” the BFI announced Monday.

The BFI Fellowship will be presented to Christopher Nolan at the BFI Chair’s Dinner in London on February 14, 2024, hosted by BFI Chair Tim Richards. This will be followed by an “In Conversation” event with Nolan on Feb.15 at the BFI Southbank theater and a special introduction to Nolan’s 2020 sci-fi film Tenet at the BFI IMAX.

In a statement, the BFI called Nolan the “rare director who marries his epic vision with an intelligent, unique approach to filmmaking and storytelling” and listed his many achievements for his films, which have won a total of 11 Oscars.

“I’m delighted to be honoring and recognizing Christopher Nolan with a BFI Fellowship,” said Richards. “Christopher Nolan...

“Oppenheimer” director Christopher Nolan is being accorded a BFI Fellowship, the highest honor bestowed by the British Film Institute.

“The fellowship recognizes Nolan’s extraordinary achievements and enormous contribution to cinema as one of the world’s most successful and influential film directors, constantly pushing the limits of what large-scale filmmaking can be whilst retaining a reverence for the history of the medium and the primacy of cinema-going,” the BFI said in a statement.

The fellowship will be presented to Nolan at the BFI chair’s dinner in London on Feb. 14, 2024, hosted by BFI Chair Tim Richards. This will be followed on Feb. 15, 2024, by an In Conversation event at BFI Southbank and an introduction to “Tenet” at BFI Imax. During his visit, Nolan will also visit the BFI National Archive’s Conservation Centre.

Nolan’s films, which also include “Memento,” “Batman Begins,” “Inception” and “Dunkirk,” have won 11 Oscars and grossed some $6.1 million globally.

To commemorate 100 years since Yasujiro Ozu's birth, Hou's Tokyo story is one that shows the Japanese director was clearly an influential figure in the Taiwanese director's love of cinema. Though while “Café Lumière” features many themes seen throughout Ozu's oeuvre, this is very much a work of Hou.

Much like Hou himself, Yoko (played by Taiwanese-Japanese Yo Hitoto) is visiting Tokyo from Taiwan to research a musician, seeking a café that he used to frequent in the capital. Pregnant by her Taiwanese boyfriend, this causes conflict with her strict, rural father, who feels out of place in the city and with his daughter. In true Ozu style, this is low on plot, with changing family dynamics and female empowerment key themes, with Yoko indifferent to her family and boyfriend's opinions on her pregnancy. She is happy to go it alone. Trains, another Ozu staple, run in the veins of this film,...

The Criterion Channel is closing the year out with a bang––they’ve announced their December lineup. Among the highlights are retrospectives on Yasujiro Ozu (featuring nearly 40 films!), Ousmane Sembène, Alfred Hitchcock (along with Kent Jones’ Hitchcock/Truffaut), and Parker Posey. Well-timed for the season is a holiday noir series that includes They Live By Night, Blast of Silence, Lady in the Lake, and more.

Other highlights are the recent restoration of Abel Gance’s La roue, an MGM Musicals series with introduction by Michael Koresky, Helena Wittmann’s riveting second feature Human Flowers of Flesh, the recent Sundance highlight The Mountains Are a Dream That Call To Me, the new restoration of The Cassandra Cat, Lynne Ramsay’s Morvern Callar, Wong Kar Wai’s The Grandmaster, and more.

See the lineup below and learn more here.

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Terry Gilliam, 1988

An American in Paris, Vincente Minnelli,...

“Always: Sunset on Third Street” is based on the manga series “Sunset on Third Street,” written and illustrated by Ryohei Saigan, which follows the lives of various characters in post-war Japan. Upon release, “Always: Sunset on Third Street” would be a box-office hit, receive an overwhelmingly positive reception, and be picked as the Picture of the Year at the 2006 Japanese Academy Awards. The success of the movie would spawn two sequels.

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Set in 1958 Japan, during the post-war economic recovery, technology is evolving, with the rising advent of television and the building of the Tokyo Tower. The primary location is a lower-income neighborhood in the Yuhi district. Rural schoolgirl Mutsuko Hoshino arrives in the metropolitan city excited to work as an apprentice at Suzuki Auto. Yet, she's perplexed when she learns that her workplace is a rundown auto repair shop...

Leading filmmakers from China, Germany, Japan and the U.S. spoke of their admiration for Yasujiro Ozu as part of the celebrations at Tokyo International Film Festival for the 120th anniversary of the legendary Japanese director’s birth.

Wim Wenders opened proceedings by introducing a screening of a 4K digitally restored version of the 1959 comedy Good Morning, describing Ozu as “the master,” before a talk event featuring Jia Zhangke, Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Kelly Reichardt.

A passionate acolyte of Ozu, Wenders shot a documentary about the acclaimed director titled Tokyo-ga four decades ago, and 10 years later came to the Tokyo fest for his 90th anniversary celebrations.

Good Morning, the second film he shot in color, is a light but perceptive chronicle of family life in postwar Japan of the kind Ozu was so adept at creating.

“Watching Good Morning for the first time in a long time, I was struck...

Shozo Ichiyama’s first two years as programming director of the Tokyo International Film Festival were overshadowed by travel restrictions sparked by a stubborn and deadly pandemic, but now he is looking to this edition of the festival to fully reflect the lineup revamp he has been working toward.

A well-connected film festival veteran and international producer, Ichiyama’s aims are for a coherent and connected film slate, along with making Tokyo a place where the industry from Asia and beyond come to meet.

The latter aim takes a step toward being realized by the more than 600 overseas guests expected at the 2023 edition of the festival (compared to around 100 in 2022), and “more requests coming in every day,” with attendee numbers boosted by the return of an in-person Tiffcom content market after a three-year pandemic-inflicted hiatus.

Meanwhile, with film production globally now firing again on all cylinders, there has been an...

Following a generation of organizational drift, the Tokyo International Film Festival has charted a course towards greater global influence under the ambitious leadership of current chairman Hiroyasu Ando. A career diplomat for Japan’s Foreign Service, Ando took the helm of the Tokyo festival in mid-2019 and quickly set about remaking the event, changing its location, shaking up the programming ranks, recruiting arthouse star Hirokazu Kore-eda to program a seminar series and adding more glamor to the after-dark parties and filmmaker fetes. A lot of that revitalization went unseen by the international film community, however, thanks to the long interregnum of the pandemic. In 2023, the Tokyo festival’s renewed outlook will be harder to miss.

“Now that the coronavirus disaster is fully over, we were able to make further progress in moving forward and upgrading our festival,” Ando tells The Hollywood Reporter.

To leverage Japan’s strengths and boost the...

Tokyo’s International Film Festival returned this evening for its first completely unrestricted, post-covid-19 edition with a well-attended screening of Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days.

Fresh from an appearance at Thierry Frémaux’s Lumière Film Festival in Lyon, Wenders, who is also the head of the competition jury at Tokyo this year, was in attendance and introduced the pic alongside most of his cast, including leading man Koji Yakusho. Yakusho won the best actor award at Cannes for his performance in the pic.

During a comedic opening speech, Wenders told the audience inside Tokyo’s Takarazuka Theatre that he had long dreamt of completing a feature shot entirely in Japan, with Yakusho as the lead actor, and a premiere screening at the Tokyo International Film Festival. However, Wenders said there was one milestone he never thought the film would achieve.

“I didn’t dare dream that it was going to be...

The Tokyo Film Festival has set the lineup for its bumper 2023 edition, running October 23 to November 1. Scroll down for the full list.

In the main competition, the festival has set 10 world premieres. The features include Japanese filmmaker Kishi Yoshiyuki’s latest pic (Ab)normal Desire and Gu Xiaogang’s Dwelling by the West Lake. Xiaogang is also set to receive the festival’s Kurosawa Akira Award alongside Mouly Surya.

Of the main competition titles, six are from East Asia, and there is noticeably a feature from Russia, with Alexey German Jr. screening his latest film, Air. Elsewhere, the festival’s Gala section is chock-full of audience favorites from fall festivals. Titles like Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things and All of Us Strangers by Andrew Haigh will screen alongside David Gordon Green’s remake The Exorcist: Believer. The Japanese films set for the Gala section include Kitano Takeshi’s Kubi, Miike Takashi’s Lumberjack the Monster,...

The Tokyo International Film Festival undertook a series of bold changes in 2020 to enhance its international reach, including a location change and major shakeups across staffing and programming. For the global film community, however, much of the overhaul went unfelt due to the travel restrictions of the pandemic. The Tokyo festival’s chairman, Hiroyasu Ando, emphasized at a press conference in the Japanese capital Wednesday that the event “aims to take a bigger leap” this year with its upcoming 36th edition, making good on its ambitions for a transformation.

“We’re really focussing on international interaction,” Ando said, noting that the festival would welcome some 600 overseas guests this year, including filmmakers, jury members and industry professionals, a major uptick from the 104 international industry VIPs who attended in 2022.

The Tokyo International Film Festival will open Oct. 23 with a gala screening of acclaimed German auteur Wim Wenders’ Tokyo-set drama Perfect Days, which...

The full lineup has been unveiled for the festival’s 36th edition.

The Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF) today revealed the lineup for its 36th edition, including 20 world premieres across its two competition strands.

The festival, set to run October 23 to November 1, will feature 15 titles in its main Competition section led by Japan and China, which each have three films in the selection.

Scroll down for full list

From China are crime drama A Long Shot from debut feature director Gao Peng; Snow Leopard by late Tibetan filmmaker Pema Tseden, which premiered at Venice; and Dwelling By The West Lake by Gu Xiaogang,...

Lyon, France — Four-time Oscar winner Alfonso Cuarón and “Time Bandits” helmer Terry Gilliam will join a star director-studded lineup at this year’s Lumière Film Festival including Wes Anderson, Alexander Payne and Wim Wenders.

Cuarón is returning to Lyon – where he was a guest of honor in 2018 – to present a selection of films by Swiss filmmaker Alain Tanner.

Gilliam will screen the newly restored version of his 1995 sci-fi thriller “Twelve Monkeys.”

One of Anderson’s latest shorts, “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar,” part of four Roald Dahl adaptations to be released on Netflix later this month, will screen at Lyon’s plush 2,000-seat Auditorium, where he will give a masterclass.

Like other guests, he will not only be introducing a retrospective of his own films but works by others, as part of an ongoing drive by the festival “to strengthen the link between the past and the present of cinema,...