Bringing the Best of Asian Film to Osaka

Osaka Asian Film Festival 2017
第12回大阪アジアン映画祭
Multilanguage with Japanese and English subtitles
Venue: ABC Hall, Cine Libre Umeda, Umeda Burg 7, Hankyu Umeda Hall, National Museum of Art Osaka | March 3 (Fri) to 12 (Sun), 2017: visit official site: http://www.oaff.jp/2017/en/schedule/index.html
Official website: www.oaff.jp/2017/en/index.html
Theater website: www.asahi.co.jp/abchall/map/
Theater website: www.ttcg.jp/cinelibre_umeda/access/
Theater website: http://burg7.com/access/

Advance tickets:  Available from the end of February, 2017
Talk event: Many events and guests, please check the official site: http://www.oaff.jp/2017/en/event/index.html

For those of you with a yen for Asian cinema, the place to be in early March is the Osaka Asian Film Festival. Now in its 12^th year, OAFF will be presenting a lineup of nearly 60 films, including 16 in its main Competition section, representing the best new work from around the region — and by region, we mean a fairly extensive area, including Japan, China, Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Bhutan, Indonesia, the Philippines, India and Qatar. (They will also show Asian-focused films from Greece, France, the Netherlands and the US, for you completists out there.)

Under the leadership of founding Programming Director Sozo Teruyama, the festival continues to earn international accolades for its depth and breadth, from its cutting-edge Indie Forum films to its Competition, Special Screening and New Action! Southeast Asia titles —  all of which will be screened with English subtitles. This year, OAFF boasts 16 world premieres, four international premieres and one Asian premiere (all others are Japan premieres, of course).

For Japanese film fans, the most exciting world premiere is the Closing Film, Parks, by Natsuki Seta (A Liar and a Broken Girl), marking her long-awaited return to feature filmmaking. An incredibly inventive celebration of the 100^th anniversary of Inokashira Park in Kichijoji, the film stars Ai Hashimoto as a college student and Mei Nagano as a high-school girl she meets near the park. Together, they follow clues in a love letter that eventually lead them to Shota Sometani, who then finds an old reel-to-reel tape recording of a love song. But the tape is damaged, the song stops in the middle, and the trio becomes obsessed with trying to recreate the missing portions. Soon, the past, present and future start converging in the park, in a charming, bittersweet, music-fueled story filled with touches of magical realism.

In the Competition section, Japanese filmmaker Daisuke Miyazaki will premiere his Yamato (California), about a troubled female rapper who lives near a US military base in Japan (played by popular actress Hanae Kan). When the daughter of her mother’s American-GI boyfriend comes to visit from California, despite initial misgivings, the young women find ways to bond over their shared enthusiasm for music.

The local highlight of every OAFF is the Indie Forum section, which this year features 12 films by emerging Japanese talent, including three supported by CO2 (Cineastes Organization Osaka). New York City’s venerable Japan Society will be bestowing the Japan Cuts Award on one of the Forum films, along with an invitation to screen the winner at the Japan Cuts Festival of New Japanese Film in New York in July.

Among the titles in the Forum lineup is the new film by Shumpei Shimizu, Breathless Lovers. Shimizu earned widespread acclaim and won several awards for his 2015 short Kim, which screened at Rotterdam, among other festivals. Also in the lineup is Ronan Girre of France with I Want to Be Loved, a Japan-set romance that apparently attracted “gods, spirits and ghosts” to the set during its production.

OAFF will also present a special package of six films under the moniker In & Out of Work: Looking at Asia through the Prism of Employment. Two of the films are from Japan: Yoichi Tanaka’s Ping Pang, about a young woman who finds relief at the ping pong table when she’s sexually harassed at work, and Yoshitaro Nomura’s The Refugee (1955), featuring Keiji Sada and Keiko Kishi as lovers — he, Chinese; she, Japanese — during wartime.

Special Program: In & Out of Work: Looking at Asia through the Prism of Employment

Housen Cultural Foundation: Support for film study and production

There are also Japanese titles in a section presented by the Housen Cultural Foundation, which supports film study and production in graduate schools around Japan.

Indie Forum

Symposiums/Talk Events

A number of symposiums and talk events, featuring participating filmmakers, will be  held during the festival. Be sure to check the OAFF website for schedules and other details.

OAFF Theaters