NARA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2020
Coming to You Online and from World Heritage Sites
Venue(s): Nara Machi Center, Nara Park Bus Terminal, Kinsho Hall, Todai-ji Culture Center, Evans Castle Hall, Kasugataisha Shrine Kansha Kyosei InstituteSeptember 18 (Fri) to September 22 (Tue), 2020: http://nara-iff.jp/2018/en/schedule/
Language: Japanese with English subtitles
Official website: nara-iff.jp/2020/en/
Theater website: nara-iff.jp/2020/map/
Advance tickets: Adults: ¥1,000: Select tickets and visit here. https://www.ticketpay.jp/#
Title: なら国際映画祭 2020 (Nara Kokusai Eigasai 2020)
The biennial Nara International Film Festival, overseen by founder and acclaimed filmmaker Naomi Kawase, is back for its 6th edition, this time as a hybrid event that will allow viewers in Japan who can’t make it to Nara to watch some of the featured films online. The entire lineup will be screened in physical halls in Nara, with festivities kicking off at the UNESCO World Heritage Site Todaiji Temple and a red carpet extending along the long path leading to the iconic Daibutsuden Hall. In a striking modern-day parallel, the buildings were constructed on orders from Emperor Shomu to calm the outbreak of a smallpox epidemic during the Nara period.
For those who can’t make the trip, some of the festival’s films will be streaming online for a limited time (Sept. 19 -21) for a small fee. Many of the events will also be streamed live online, including the red carpet, the opening ceremony at Kasugano-enchi in Nara Park, and Q&A sessions with guests from around the globe. World Heritage site Kohfukuji Temple’s Chukondo, reconstructed for the 8th time in 2018, will also appear online for the NARA’ndez-vous event, hosted by Naomi Kawase and a secret guest.
TRACING HER SHADOW
This year’s first film highlight is the cross-cultural love story Tracing Her Shadow by single-named Chinese director Pengfei. It was executive produced by Kawase and Chinese auteur Jia Zhangke as part of the festival’s NARAtive filmmaking project, which brings directors to Nara to make films with the local communities around the prefecture. Pengfei’s second feature, The Taste of Rice Flower, won the Audience Award at the 2018 NIFF, qualifying him for the project.
Tracing Her Shadow is about a young Chinese woman, Xiaoze, who has been based in Japan for many years when her “grandma” comes to visit and asks her help in locating the Japanese war orphan whom she’d raised as her own daughter. The two women take off on what could possibly be a wild goose chase, encountering colorful characters along the way (among them such Japanese stalwarts Jun Kunimura and Masatoshi Nagase). As Pengfei says, “Sadly, mentioning Japan to modern Chinese people commonly evokes memories of the tragic war. But war ends, and love doesn’t.”
CINEMA FIGHTERS
Another highlight is the Special Programs section, with events being held at Nara’s shrines and temples. At Todaiji, that includes a screening of the latest Cinema Fighters short films, this year directed by Takashi Miike, lsao Yukisada, Daishi Matsunaga, Hiroki Horanai and Hiroki Inoue. The films, starring members of the LDH boy-band empire, are executive produced by LDH founder Exile Hiro and produced by Tetsuya Bessho, founder and director of Short Shorts Film Festival & Asia. The ongoing project adapts the world view of poems by lyricist Masato Odake into short films.
FOOD LORE: LIFE IN A BOX
Actor-director Takumi Saitoh will also be in Nara with Food Lore: Life in a Box, one of the episodes he directed in the popular HBO Asia anthology series about how food can create and shape relationships. Saitoh’s episode focuses on a widower, a wrestler and an author who are on the same train car heading to the countryside when there’s an unexpected delay. Each experiences a journey of memory and rediscovery, triggered by their taste buds.
The International Competition section, presided over by a jury comprised of acclaimed Singaporean filmmaker Eric Khoo, prolific Japanese filmmaker Isao Yukisada (Theatre: A Love Story, The Cornered Mouse Dreams of Cheese) and neuroscientist/medical doctor Nobuko Nakano, does not include any Japanese titles. But it does feature work from from Korea, France, Spain, Slovenia, South Africa, Canada, Malaysia and India, and they all have English subs.
There are many English-subbed Japanese films in the NARA-wave Student Film Competition, which will be judged by producer Marianne Slot and indie film queen Makiko Watanabe (Capturing Dad, 37 Seconds). They will choose the winner of the Golden Kojika Award from a diverse selection of short-to-feature-length films, with the winning student entitled to propose a film plan for the next NARAtive project.
LIGHT • WALK
The Japanese films in this section include Light • Walk by Koki Yonezawa, about a young man working as a detective whose estranged sister leaves her 10-year-old daughter in his care for a week; Blooming Sunset at Dawn by Huang Menglu, about a 35-year-old man who lives with his Chinese-immigrant mom, who now has dementia; After the Night on the Bridge, inspired by stories that director Yuiga Danzuka heard about his mother; Tokyo Girl by Nebiro Hashimoto, about a woman living in the big city and the words she says to herself, either because she wants to or needs to; sweep. by Takuya Miyahara, concerning a high school girl who steals a guitar from a homeless man but thinks better of it; and the feature-length Roll by Daichi Murase, which tells the story of a young man who loves tinkering with out-of-use items and his encounter with celluloid film, which opens up an entirely new world for him.
THE PAYOFF
There are also English subs on the Masaya Kato Selection, which includes three short films featuring the star of the 2018 NARAtive film The Nikaido’s Fall, an in-demand character actor. The Payoff sees Kato as a lone wolf killer living quietly until he suddenly becomes the target of an assassination plot. Gotham Jumble Parfait stars the actor as a yakuza gangster who’s in a café, inexplicably covered in blood, facing a young man covered in cream soda. Between them is a pistol and a dead body. In Hotel Hermitage, Kato is a man who’s called for an escort, only to discover his long-lost love when the woman shows up.
THE PHONE OF THE WIND
Finally, if you haven’t seen it yet, here’s your chance to catch Nobuhiro Suwa’s moving The Phone of the Wind, part of the Berlinale Spotlight — Generation lineup. It stars Serena Motola as a traumatized 17-year-old staying with her aunt in Hiroshima after she’s lost her family in the Fukushima tsunami in 2011. Desperate for answers, she starts hitchhiking across Japan to get back to her hometown, encountering amazing people along the way (played by the likes of Hidetoshi Nishijima, Toshiyuki Nishida and Shinsuke Kato, among others) and hears their own stories of loss, before finally arriving at the “Kaze no Denwa,” where she hopes to talk to her dead family. (The phone actually exists, and has been visited by thousands of people who have gone to mourn loved ones that have passed away.)
Film Event Venues: https://nara-iff.jp/2020/map/
Nara Kokusai Eigasai 2020
なら国際映画祭 2020
Venue: Nara Machi Center, Nara Park Bus Terminal, Kinsho Hall, Todai-ji Culture Center, Evans Castle Hall, Kasugataisha Shrine Kansha Kyosei Institute | September 18 (Fri) to September 22 (Tue), 2020: http://nara-iff.jp/2018/en/schedule/
Official website: nara-iff.jp/2020/en/
Theater website: nara-iff.jp/2020/map/
The biennial Nara International Film Festival, overseen by founder and acclaimed filmmaker Naomi Kawase, is back for its 6th edition, this time as a hybrid event that will allow viewers in Japan who can’t make it to Nara to watch some of the featured films online. The entire lineup will be screened in physical halls in Nara, with festivities kicking off at the UNESCO World Heritage Site Todaiji Temple and a red carpet extending along the long path leading to the iconic Daibutsuden Hall. In a striking modern-day parallel, the buildings were constructed on orders from Emperor Shomu to calm the outbreak of a smallpox epidemic during the Nara period.
For those who can’t make the trip, some of the festival’s films will be streaming online for a limited time (Sept. 19 -21) for a small fee. Many of the events will also be streamed live online, including the red carpet, the opening ceremony at Kasugano-enchi in Nara Park, and Q&A sessions with guests from around the globe. World Heritage site Kohfukuji Temple’s Chukondo, reconstructed for the 8th time in 2018, will also appear online for the NARA’ndez-vous event, hosted by Naomi Kawase and a secret guest.
TRACING HER SHADOW
This year’s first film highlight is the cross-cultural love story Tracing Her Shadow by single-named Chinese director Pengfei. It was executive produced by Kawase and Chinese auteur Jia Zhangke as part of the festival’s NARAtive filmmaking project, which brings directors to Nara to make films with the local communities around the prefecture. Pengfei’s second feature, The Taste of Rice Flower, won the Audience Award at the 2018 NIFF, qualifying him for the project.
Tracing Her Shadow is about a young Chinese woman, Xiaoze, who has been based in Japan for many years when her “grandma” comes to visit and asks her help in locating the Japanese war orphan whom she’d raised as her own daughter. The two women take off on what could possibly be a wild goose chase, encountering colorful characters along the way (among them such Japanese stalwarts Jun Kunimura and Masatoshi Nagase). As Pengfei says, “Sadly, mentioning Japan to modern Chinese people commonly evokes memories of the tragic war. But war ends, and love doesn’t.”
CINEMA FIGHTERS
Another highlight is the Special Programs section, with events being held at Nara’s shrines and temples. At Todaiji, that includes a screening of the latest Cinema Fighters short films, this year directed by Takashi Miike, lsao Yukisada, Daishi Matsunaga, Hiroki Horanai and Hiroki Inoue. The films, starring members of the LDH boy-band empire, are executive produced by LDH founder Exile Hiro and produced by Tetsuya Bessho, founder and director of Short Shorts Film Festival & Asia. The ongoing project adapts the world view of poems by lyricist Masato Odake into short films.
FOOD LORE: LIFE IN A BOX
Actor-director Takumi Saitoh will also be in Nara with Food Lore: Life in a Box, one of the episodes he directed in the popular HBO Asia anthology series about how food can create and shape relationships. Saitoh’s episode focuses on a widower, a wrestler and an author who are on the same train car heading to the countryside when there’s an unexpected delay. Each experiences a journey of memory and rediscovery, triggered by their taste buds.
The International Competition section, presided over by a jury comprised of acclaimed Singaporean filmmaker Eric Khoo, prolific Japanese filmmaker Isao Yukisada (Theatre: A Love Story, The Cornered Mouse Dreams of Cheese) and neuroscientist/medical doctor Nobuko Nakano, does not include any Japanese titles. But it does feature work from from Korea, France, Spain, Slovenia, South Africa, Canada, Malaysia and India, and they all have English subs.
There are many English-subbed Japanese films in the NARA-wave Student Film Competition, which will be judged by producer Marianne Slot and indie film queen Makiko Watanabe (Capturing Dad, 37 Seconds). They will choose the winner of the Golden Kojika Award from a diverse selection of short-to-feature-length films, with the winning student entitled to propose a film plan for the next NARAtive project.
LIGHT • WALK
The Japanese films in this section include Light • Walk by Koki Yonezawa, about a young man working as a detective whose estranged sister leaves her 10-year-old daughter in his care for a week; Blooming Sunset at Dawn by Huang Menglu, about a 35-year-old man who lives with his Chinese-immigrant mom, who now has dementia; After the Night on the Bridge, inspired by stories that director Yuiga Danzuka heard about his mother; Tokyo Girl by Nebiro Hashimoto, about a woman living in the big city and the words she says to herself, either because she wants to or needs to; sweep. by Takuya Miyahara, concerning a high school girl who steals a guitar from a homeless man but thinks better of it; and the feature-length Roll by Daichi Murase, which tells the story of a young man who loves tinkering with out-of-use items and his encounter with celluloid film, which opens up an entirely new world for him.
THE PAYOFF
There are also English subs on the Masaya Kato Selection, which includes three short films featuring the star of the 2018 NARAtive film The Nikaido’s Fall, an in-demand character actor. The Payoff sees Kato as a lone wolf killer living quietly until he suddenly becomes the target of an assassination plot. Gotham Jumble Parfait stars the actor as a yakuza gangster who’s in a café, inexplicably covered in blood, facing a young man covered in cream soda. Between them is a pistol and a dead body. In Hotel Hermitage, Kato is a man who’s called for an escort, only to discover his long-lost love when the woman shows up.
THE PHONE OF THE WIND
Finally, if you haven’t seen it yet, here’s your chance to catch Nobuhiro Suwa’s moving The Phone of the Wind, part of the Berlinale Spotlight — Generation lineup. It stars Serena Motola as a traumatized 17-year-old staying with her aunt in Hiroshima after she’s lost her family in the Fukushima tsunami in 2011. Desperate for answers, she starts hitchhiking across Japan to get back to her hometown, encountering amazing people along the way (played by the likes of Hidetoshi Nishijima, Toshiyuki Nishida and Shinsuke Kato, among others) and hears their own stories of loss, before finally arriving at the “Kaze no Denwa,” where she hopes to talk to her dead family. (The phone actually exists, and has been visited by thousands of people who have gone to mourn loved ones that have passed away.)
Film Event Venues: https://nara-iff.jp/2020/map/
Nara Kokusai Eigasai 2020
なら国際映画祭 2020
Venue: Nara Machi Center, Nara Park Bus Terminal, Kinsho Hall, Todai-ji Culture Center, Evans Castle Hall, Kasugataisha Shrine Kansha Kyosei Institute | September 18 (Fri) to September 22 (Tue), 2020: http://nara-iff.jp/2018/en/schedule/
Official website: nara-iff.jp/2020/en/
Theater website: nara-iff.jp/2020/map/
Please be sure to check with the theater before going.