OSAKA ASIAN FILM FESTIVAL 2018
Celebrating Regional Diversity
Venue(s): ABC Hall, Cine Libre Umeda, Umeda Burg 7, Hankyu Umeda Hall, National Museum of Art OsakaMarch 9 (Fri) to 18 (Sun), 2018: visit official site: http://www.oaff.jp/2018/en/schedule/index.html
Language: Multilanguage with Japanese and English subtitles
Official website: www.oaff.jp/2018/en/index.html
Theater website: www.asahi.co.jp/abchall/map/
Tariff: ¥1,500 for single ticket at door.: http://www.oaff.jp/2018/en/ticket/index.html
Advance tickets: ¥1,300 to ¥1,500 + service fee for single ticket. Available from February 24, 2018. At PIA (in Japanese): http://ticket-search.pia.jp/pia/search_all.do?kw=大阪アジアン映画祭
Talk event: Many events and guests, please check the official site: http://www.oaff.jp/2018/en/event/index.html
Title: 第13回大阪アジアン映画祭 (Osaka Asian Film Festival 2018)
Each March, Osaka is the essential destination for Japan-based cinephiles. The Osaka Asian Film Festival, now in its 13th year, unofficially ushers in spring with a lineup of the best new work from 18 nations and territories around the region. There are also Japan- and Asia-focused films from beyond the strict confines of the area, and thanks to the increasing number of co-productions with Japan, quite a few titles with shared designations of national origin.
During OAFF’s 10-day run, from March 9 – 18, over 50 films will vie for critical attention and prizes at venues around the city. This year, there are 13 world premieres and 7 international premieres (all the others are Japan premieres) playing in the Competition, Indie Forum, CO2: Here & There and Special Screenings sections, with packages under the monikers New Action! Southeast Asia, Special Focus on Hong Kong, Taiwan: Movies on the Move and Sandaan: 100 Years of Philippine Cinema.
Under the leadership of founding Programming Director Sozo Teruyama, the festival continues to please crowds with just the right mix of commercially oriented arthouse fair and edgy work by debuting filmmakers — and as ever, nearly all of them will be screened with English subtitles.
For fans of Japanese films, both the Opening and Closing films should not be missed. OAFF kicks off with the hit Korean biopic Anarchist from the Colony, by Lee Joon-ik. While Park Yeol may be a household name in his native Korea, he is barely known in Japan, where he lived in the early years of the 20th century. Following the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923 and the government’s ensuing arrest/torture/killing of innocent Koreans, Yeol and his Japanese lover, Fumiko Kaneko, are radicalized to act. They get themselves arrested, insist they are behind a plot to kill Crown Prince Hirohito, and very nearly bring the justice system to its knees. As Yeol’s story unfolds — following the historic facts, with frequent comic relief — the viewer can’t help but wonder why it hasn’t been committed to screen previously.
Anarchist from the Colony, 朴烈
Opening film
Japan Premiere
2017｜Korea｜128min
Director: LEE Joon-ik
The festival will close with the world premiere of Akihiro Toda’s The Name, about a bankrupt, divorced salaryman (veteran character actor Kanji Tsuda) who’s hit rock bottom in Ibaraki. One day, he meets a mysterious high-school girl and begins a platonic relationship that just may be his salvation. Adapting a Naoki Prize-winning novel, stage director Toda looks set to duplicate the indie success of his off-kilter debut Tangerine on Cat (2014) with his latest feature.
The Name, 名前
Closing film
World Premiere
2018｜Japan｜114min
Director: TODA Akihiro (戸田彬弘)
The marvelously wide-ranging 15-film Competition section includes the Asian premiere of Anshul Chauhan’s Bad Poetry Tokyo, just weeks after the film won the Grand Prix for Best Picture at the Brussels Independent Film Festival. Tokyo-based Chauhan, an animator and CG artist by weekday, has been devoting his weekends to live-action filmmaking for the past couple of years, and Bad Poetry Tokyo marks his feature debut. Like his short films, this one is gorgeous to watch, but dark as pitch. Jun (an exceptionally good Shuna Iijima) works in a divey hostess club while pursuing her dreams of acting. Suddenly betrayed and broken by her boyfriend, she returns to her sleepy hometown in Nagano to regroup. There, she takes up with an old flame, but her father, and unwanted visitors from Tokyo, conspire to prevent her recovery.
Bad Poetry Tokyo, 東京不穏詩
Competition
Asia Premiere
2017｜Japan｜116min
Director: Anshul CHAUHAN
Although the other 14 films in competition aren’t connected to Japan, they’re highly recommended: Derek Chiu’s No. 1 Chung Ying Street will makes its world premiere, and there are international premieres from Sigrid Andrea P. Bernardo, Mr. and Mrs. Cruz (her Hokkaido-set Kita Kita was a hit in last year’s OAFF Competition), Giancarlo Abrahan’s Paki (Please, Care), and the animated film A Dog’s Life. The section also features Golden Horse winner The Bold, The Corrupt and the Beautiful; the US indie hit Colombus (the most poignant film ever made about modern architecture), by Korean-born, Midwest-raised academic-turned-director Kogonada; Mikhail Red’s Neomanila; Hsieh Chun-yi’s Take Me To the Moon; and Somaratne Dissanayake’s Underpants Thief.
The hands-down don’t-miss title in the Special Screenings section is Akio Fujimoto’s Japan-Myanmar coproduction Passage of Life, winner of both the Best Asian Future Film Award and the Spirit of Asia Award at last fall’s Tokyo International Film Festival. Passage of Life is a touching, timely film about a refugee family from Myanmar trying to make a new life in Japan, and speaks volumes about the inadequacies of Japan’s immigration policies. Its cast of nonprofessionals, including two boys who were only 3 and 6 when the film was shot, is utterly remarkable.
(Another film with similar themes, also a Japan-Myanmar coproduction, My Country My Home by Kyi Phyu Shin, is screening over in New Action! Southeast Asia.)
Passage of Life, 僕の帰る場所
Special Screening
2017｜Japan, Myanmar｜100min
Director: FUJIMOTO Akio (藤元明緒)
The Special Screenings section will also host the world premiere of Japan-South Korea co-production Woozoo Be Alright? by Baek Jae-ho and Lee Hee-seop. Set primarily in Osaka, it starts out as a business mystery and moves into lighter, more musical terrain once its Korean salaryman discovers a small bar and the musicians there.
Woozoo be Alright?, あなたの宇宙は大丈夫ですか
Special Screening
World Premiere
2018｜Japan, Korea｜110min
Director: BAEK Jae-ho, LEE Hee-seop
The local highlight of every OAFF is the Indie Forum section, which this year screens seven features and seven shorts by emerging talent, four of them world premieres from Japan. New York City’s venerable Japan Society will bestow the Japan Cuts Award on one of the section’s films, along with an invitation to screen the work at the Japan Cuts Festival of New Japanese Film in New York in July.
Among the titles in the Forum lineup is Umi Ishihara’s The Garden Apartment, about a pregnant young woman whose boyfriend’s aunt hosts female bacchanals; Moët Hayami’s Kushina, What Will You Be? about a hidden village of women who fled their lives to commit suicide, and now support each other; Kohei Takayama’s The Path Leading to Love, about a talented managaka grappling with alcoholism; Hitoshi Yazaki’s Still Life of Memories, starring Masanobu Ando as a photographer whose relationship is disrupted when a young woman asks him to shoot her private parts; and Daisuke Miyazaki’s Tourism, starring Nina Endo and Sumire as two friends who win a trip to Singapore and start coming to life there. Miyazaki was also at last year’s OAFF with Yamato (California), in which Endo also starred.
Kushina, what will you be, クシナ
Indie Forum
World Premiere
2018｜Japan｜68min
Director: HAYAMI Moët (速水萌巴)
Tourism
World Premiere
2018｜Japan, Singapore｜77min
Director: MIYAZAKI Daisuke (宮崎大祐)
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
Each March, Osaka is the essential destination for Japan-based cinephiles. The Osaka Asian Film Festival, now in its 13th year, unofficially ushers in spring with a lineup of the best new work from 18 nations and territories around the region. There are also Japan- and Asia-focused films from beyond the strict confines of the area, and thanks to the increasing number of co-productions with Japan, quite a few titles with shared designations of national origin.
During OAFF’s 10-day run, from March 9 – 18, over 50 films will vie for critical attention and prizes at venues around the city. This year, there are 13 world premieres and 7 international premieres (all the others are Japan premieres) playing in the Competition, Indie Forum, CO2: Here & There and Special Screenings sections, with packages under the monikers New Action! Southeast Asia, Special Focus on Hong Kong, Taiwan: Movies on the Move and Sandaan: 100 Years of Philippine Cinema.
Under the leadership of founding Programming Director Sozo Teruyama, the festival continues to please crowds with just the right mix of commercially oriented arthouse fair and edgy work by debuting filmmakers — and as ever, nearly all of them will be screened with English subtitles.
For fans of Japanese films, both the Opening and Closing films should not be missed. OAFF kicks off with the hit Korean biopic Anarchist from the Colony, by Lee Joon-ik. While Park Yeol may be a household name in his native Korea, he is barely known in Japan, where he lived in the early years of the 20th century. Following the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923 and the government’s ensuing arrest/torture/killing of innocent Koreans, Yeol and his Japanese lover, Fumiko Kaneko, are radicalized to act. They get themselves arrested, insist they are behind a plot to kill Crown Prince Hirohito, and very nearly bring the justice system to its knees. As Yeol’s story unfolds — following the historic facts, with frequent comic relief — the viewer can’t help but wonder why it hasn’t been committed to screen previously.
Anarchist from the Colony, 朴烈
Opening film
Japan Premiere
2017｜Korea｜128min
Director: LEE Joon-ik
The festival will close with the world premiere of Akihiro Toda’s The Name, about a bankrupt, divorced salaryman (veteran character actor Kanji Tsuda) who’s hit rock bottom in Ibaraki. One day, he meets a mysterious high-school girl and begins a platonic relationship that just may be his salvation. Adapting a Naoki Prize-winning novel, stage director Toda looks set to duplicate the indie success of his off-kilter debut Tangerine on Cat (2014) with his latest feature.
The Name, 名前
Closing film
World Premiere
2018｜Japan｜114min
Director: TODA Akihiro (戸田彬弘)
The marvelously wide-ranging 15-film Competition section includes the Asian premiere of Anshul Chauhan’s Bad Poetry Tokyo, just weeks after the film won the Grand Prix for Best Picture at the Brussels Independent Film Festival. Tokyo-based Chauhan, an animator and CG artist by weekday, has been devoting his weekends to live-action filmmaking for the past couple of years, and Bad Poetry Tokyo marks his feature debut. Like his short films, this one is gorgeous to watch, but dark as pitch. Jun (an exceptionally good Shuna Iijima) works in a divey hostess club while pursuing her dreams of acting. Suddenly betrayed and broken by her boyfriend, she returns to her sleepy hometown in Nagano to regroup. There, she takes up with an old flame, but her father, and unwanted visitors from Tokyo, conspire to prevent her recovery.
Bad Poetry Tokyo, 東京不穏詩
Competition
Asia Premiere
2017｜Japan｜116min
Director: Anshul CHAUHAN
Although the other 14 films in competition aren’t connected to Japan, they’re highly recommended: Derek Chiu’s No. 1 Chung Ying Street will makes its world premiere, and there are international premieres from Sigrid Andrea P. Bernardo, Mr. and Mrs. Cruz (her Hokkaido-set Kita Kita was a hit in last year’s OAFF Competition), Giancarlo Abrahan’s Paki (Please, Care), and the animated film A Dog’s Life. The section also features Golden Horse winner The Bold, The Corrupt and the Beautiful; the US indie hit Colombus (the most poignant film ever made about modern architecture), by Korean-born, Midwest-raised academic-turned-director Kogonada; Mikhail Red’s Neomanila; Hsieh Chun-yi’s Take Me To the Moon; and Somaratne Dissanayake’s Underpants Thief.
The hands-down don’t-miss title in the Special Screenings section is Akio Fujimoto’s Japan-Myanmar coproduction Passage of Life, winner of both the Best Asian Future Film Award and the Spirit of Asia Award at last fall’s Tokyo International Film Festival. Passage of Life is a touching, timely film about a refugee family from Myanmar trying to make a new life in Japan, and speaks volumes about the inadequacies of Japan’s immigration policies. Its cast of nonprofessionals, including two boys who were only 3 and 6 when the film was shot, is utterly remarkable.
(Another film with similar themes, also a Japan-Myanmar coproduction, My Country My Home by Kyi Phyu Shin, is screening over in New Action! Southeast Asia.)
Passage of Life, 僕の帰る場所
Special Screening
2017｜Japan, Myanmar｜100min
Director: FUJIMOTO Akio (藤元明緒)
The Special Screenings section will also host the world premiere of Japan-South Korea co-production Woozoo Be Alright? by Baek Jae-ho and Lee Hee-seop. Set primarily in Osaka, it starts out as a business mystery and moves into lighter, more musical terrain once its Korean salaryman discovers a small bar and the musicians there.
Woozoo be Alright?, あなたの宇宙は大丈夫ですか
Special Screening
World Premiere
2018｜Japan, Korea｜110min
Director: BAEK Jae-ho, LEE Hee-seop
The local highlight of every OAFF is the Indie Forum section, which this year screens seven features and seven shorts by emerging talent, four of them world premieres from Japan. New York City’s venerable Japan Society will bestow the Japan Cuts Award on one of the section’s films, along with an invitation to screen the work at the Japan Cuts Festival of New Japanese Film in New York in July.
Among the titles in the Forum lineup is Umi Ishihara’s The Garden Apartment, about a pregnant young woman whose boyfriend’s aunt hosts female bacchanals; Moët Hayami’s Kushina, What Will You Be? about a hidden village of women who fled their lives to commit suicide, and now support each other; Kohei Takayama’s The Path Leading to Love, about a talented managaka grappling with alcoholism; Hitoshi Yazaki’s Still Life of Memories, starring Masanobu Ando as a photographer whose relationship is disrupted when a young woman asks him to shoot her private parts; and Daisuke Miyazaki’s Tourism, starring Nina Endo and Sumire as two friends who win a trip to Singapore and start coming to life there. Miyazaki was also at last year’s OAFF with Yamato (California), in which Endo also starred.
Kushina, what will you be, クシナ
Indie Forum
World Premiere
2018｜Japan｜68min
Director: HAYAMI Moët (速水萌巴)
Tourism
World Premiere
2018｜Japan, Singapore｜77min
Director: MIYAZAKI Daisuke (宮崎大祐)
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
Please be sure to check with the theater before going.