OSAKA ASIAN FILM FESTIVAL 2025 – Expo
Special Expo Edition of the Osaka Asian Film Festival
Venue(s): ABC Hall, Theatre Umeda (former Cine Libre), T-Joy Umeda, Nakanoshima Museum of ArtAugust 29 (Fri) - September 9 (Sun), 2025
Language: Multilanguage with Japanese and English subtitles
Official website: oaff.jp/en/oaff2025expo/
Theater website: www.asahi.co.jp/abchall/map/
Tariff: Adults: ¥1,300, Under 22: ¥500 for tickets at door.
Advance tickets: https://oaff.jp/en/news/2025expo-tickets/
Title: 第21回大阪アジアン映画祭 (Dai 21 Kai Osaka Asian Eigasai)
If you’re looking for a cool, stimulating environment while visiting Expo 2025, look no further: The Osaka Asian Film Festival, which just celebrated its 20th anniversary in March, is returning for a special Expo run, with a thrilling new lineup of 68 features and shorts—including 23 world, 5 international, 3 Asian and 23 Japan premieres. That’s a staggering feat to pull off twice in one year, but the 21st edition of OAFF, running August 29 - September 7, is doing it. Nearly all the films have English subtitles, and there will be over 80 stage appearances by leading filmmakers, actors and other industry lights. While Tokyo Filmgoer covers only Japanese films, the lineup is full of terrific titles from elsewhere, so we urge you to explore those as well.
As with its 20 previous editions, OAFF Programming Director Sozo Teruoka and his team have programmed an impressive balance of commercially oriented work and arthouse-leaning work by emerging and known filmmakers. During its 10-day run, OAFF will present work from throughout the region (and beyond), vying for prizes and audience approval in various sections: Competition, Spotlight, Indie Forum and Special Screenings, with Special Programs coming from Taiwan and Hong Kong, along with programs comprising student work and work supported by the Housen Cultural Foundation (the latter of which are screening for free).
Opening Film
Tracing to EXPO ’70 (2K Restoration) / 萬博追踪（2K數位修復）
LIAO Hsiang-Hsiung / 廖祥雄
World Premiere
Taiwan / 2025, 97 min
The Opening Film, Tracing to Expo ’70, while not a Japanese film, is both set in and concerns Japan. It also, obviously, ties in nicely to the Expo theme and presents the first opportunity for most audiences to see the spanking-new 2K restoration of a 1970 release that had slipped into obscurity. Liao Hsiang-Hsiung’s film stars Taiwanese Japanese legend Judy Ongg as a young woman who was raised in Japan. Her search for her long-lost benefactor takes her nearly the breadth and width of Japan, finally ending at the 1970 Osaka Expo. The film’s views of the country, as well as the earlier exhibition, are colorful and breathtaking. And for those of us unfamiliar with the Judy Ongg of 55 years ago, it’s a reminder just how vibrant she’s always been.
Competition Films
This year’s international Competition features 11 titles that are extremely diverse in genre and theme. The jury members deciding a range of awards are Taiwanese director Fu Tienyu (Day Off), recipient of the Akira Kurosawa Award at last year’s Tokyo International Film Festival; Nanami Hidaka, who has appeared in a range of independent films, including Koji Fukada’s The Real Thing, and stars in two films screening in this year’s Indie Forum section: Dreams and Paths and Coffee After All; and Singaporean director Ong Kuo Sin, whose A Good Child is OAFF’s Closing Film.
They will consider the fortunes of 13 films. The Competition lineup includes one title by a Japanese director, Toshio Sekine, Shambhala Story.
Shambhala Story /シャンバラストーリー
Toshio Sekine / 関根俊夫
Japan, USA, India, 2025, 108 min
A Japan-US-India coproduction, the film begins in Darjeeling, India, in the Himalayan foothills. In a monastery, a devout Tibetan Buddhist monk named Tashi is selected to be sent to Japan, where he will continue his spiritual training. Once here, he meets a irritable elderly man and his granddaughter, Emi (Rina Takeda), who is on parole from prison. New bonds begin to form, and Tashi is soon faced with an internal struggle between religious vows and true love.
Special Screenings
In the Special Screenings section, a must-see is Yugo Sakamoto’s Flame Union, a world premiere that continues his much-beloved Kunioka the Killer franchise (although admittedly it doesn’t have quite the global following that the writer-director’s Baby Assassins series does). In this latest ass-kicking comic action adventure, Masayuki Kunioka, Kyoto’s most powerful freelance hitman, saves the life of part-time freelance assassin Takuya Manaka (Masayuki Ino), after he botches a big gun procurement assignment. Manaka is understandably suspended from the hitman association and his father, the former #1-ranked hitman in Kyoto, forces him to come home to do chores. It’s up to Kunioka to reignite Manaka’s passion for the kill, and of course it all begins with bouts of spirited training.
Flame Union / フレイムユニオン 最強殺し屋伝説国岡 [私闘編]
SAKAMOTO Yugo / 阪元裕吾
World Premiere
2025, Japan, 103 min
Indie Forum
The Indie Forum, always the section for new discoveries at OAFF, includes 21 Japanese titles, from shorts to mid-length films to features, and encompasses an enormous range of styles and genres. The coveted Japan Cuts Award will be bestowed by the Japan Society of New York on a film from this section.
A Very Straight Neck /「まっすぐな首」
Neo Sora / 空音央
Japan Premiere
2025, Japan, China, 10 min
We would be remiss not mentioning that it includes the Japan premiere of A Very Straight Neck, the Locarno Film Festival award-winning short by heralded director Neo Sora (Happyend, Ryuichi Sakamoto | Opus), starring everyone’s favorite actress, Sakura Ando; and the Director in Focus spotlight on the prolific young helmer Miki Tanaka, who will be represented by 3 short titles, including the world premiere of Blue Amber, featuring the star of Sora’s Happyend, Hayato Kurihara.
Blue Amber / ブルー・アンバー
Miki Tanaka / 田中未来
World Premiere
Japan, 2025, 34 min
Among the many feature-length highlights are 2 world premieres:
Oudai Kojima’s extraordinary Flames of a Flower delivers on the promise he showed with his first feature, also an OAFF premiere back in 2021, Joint. His new work is a timely and compelling tale of personal recovery that draws its inspiration from an actual incident, reported in 2016 but covered up by the government, after Japan sent a 350-member team to join the UN peacekeeping operations (PKO) in war-torn South Sudan. In 2018, two Japanese Self-Defense Force officers who had also participated in the mission committed suicide, but the Ministry of Defense stated there was no connection to their experiences in Africa.
Flames of a Flower /「火の華」
Oudai Kojima / 小島央大
World Premiere
Japan, 2025, 124 min
While Kojima’s new film is not entirely nonfiction, it tackles truths that have been essentially taboo in Japanese cinema. Delving into the dark side of PKOs and addressing the challenges of living with PTSD, Flames of a Flower vividly depicts the harrowing experiences of a former SDF member (played by Ikken Yamamoto, who cowrote the script), who has begun training as a fireworks artisan. His fellow artisans are impressed by his understanding of gunpowder — a material that is paradoxically used to create bullets that kill, as well as fireworks that heal.
Dawn Chorus / もういちどみつめる
Yoshinori Sato / 佐藤慶紀
World Premiere
Japan, 2025, 113 min
Yoshinori Sato (Her Mother, Shinjuku Tiger) returns to Osaka with his new teen drama Dawn Chorus, which was inspired by the need to create a nuanced look at youth crime following revisions to Japan’s Juvenile Law. It stars rising actor Mansaku Takada (The Wandering Moo; Two Seasons, Two Strangers) and the incomparable Mariko Tsutsui (Harmonium, A Girl Missing). Takada plays Yuki, an 18 year old with a complex family background and past. He’s facing the trauma of losing his mother at the same time he’s trying to redefine his own identity, after being released from juvenile detention and being met with a callous world.
His aunt, Noriko (Tsutsui) attempts to help but struggles to communicate in a meaningful way. She does, however, given Yuki a job and tries to listen to him. They gradually warm to each other, until Noriko’s own son shows up one day…
OAFF Theaters
If you’re looking for a cool, stimulating environment while visiting Expo 2025, look no further: The Osaka Asian Film Festival, which just celebrated its 20th anniversary in March, is returning for a special Expo run, with a thrilling new lineup of 68 features and shorts—including 23 world, 5 international, 3 Asian and 23 Japan premieres. That’s a staggering feat to pull off twice in one year, but the 21st edition of OAFF, running August 29 - September 7, is doing it. Nearly all the films have English subtitles, and there will be over 80 stage appearances by leading filmmakers, actors and other industry lights. While Tokyo Filmgoer covers only Japanese films, the lineup is full of terrific titles from elsewhere, so we urge you to explore those as well.
As with its 20 previous editions, OAFF Programming Director Sozo Teruoka and his team have programmed an impressive balance of commercially oriented work and arthouse-leaning work by emerging and known filmmakers. During its 10-day run, OAFF will present work from throughout the region (and beyond), vying for prizes and audience approval in various sections: Competition, Spotlight, Indie Forum and Special Screenings, with Special Programs coming from Taiwan and Hong Kong, along with programs comprising student work and work supported by the Housen Cultural Foundation (the latter of which are screening for free).
Opening Film
Tracing to EXPO ’70 (2K Restoration) / 萬博追踪（2K數位修復）
LIAO Hsiang-Hsiung / 廖祥雄
World Premiere
Taiwan / 2025, 97 min
The Opening Film, Tracing to Expo ’70, while not a Japanese film, is both set in and concerns Japan. It also, obviously, ties in nicely to the Expo theme and presents the first opportunity for most audiences to see the spanking-new 2K restoration of a 1970 release that had slipped into obscurity. Liao Hsiang-Hsiung’s film stars Taiwanese Japanese legend Judy Ongg as a young woman who was raised in Japan. Her search for her long-lost benefactor takes her nearly the breadth and width of Japan, finally ending at the 1970 Osaka Expo. The film’s views of the country, as well as the earlier exhibition, are colorful and breathtaking. And for those of us unfamiliar with the Judy Ongg of 55 years ago, it’s a reminder just how vibrant she’s always been.
Competition Films
This year’s international Competition features 11 titles that are extremely diverse in genre and theme. The jury members deciding a range of awards are Taiwanese director Fu Tienyu (Day Off), recipient of the Akira Kurosawa Award at last year’s Tokyo International Film Festival; Nanami Hidaka, who has appeared in a range of independent films, including Koji Fukada’s The Real Thing, and stars in two films screening in this year’s Indie Forum section: Dreams and Paths and Coffee After All; and Singaporean director Ong Kuo Sin, whose A Good Child is OAFF’s Closing Film.
They will consider the fortunes of 13 films. The Competition lineup includes one title by a Japanese director, Toshio Sekine, Shambhala Story.
Shambhala Story /シャンバラストーリー
Toshio Sekine / 関根俊夫
Japan, USA, India, 2025, 108 min
A Japan-US-India coproduction, the film begins in Darjeeling, India, in the Himalayan foothills. In a monastery, a devout Tibetan Buddhist monk named Tashi is selected to be sent to Japan, where he will continue his spiritual training. Once here, he meets a irritable elderly man and his granddaughter, Emi (Rina Takeda), who is on parole from prison. New bonds begin to form, and Tashi is soon faced with an internal struggle between religious vows and true love.
Special Screenings
In the Special Screenings section, a must-see is Yugo Sakamoto’s Flame Union, a world premiere that continues his much-beloved Kunioka the Killer franchise (although admittedly it doesn’t have quite the global following that the writer-director’s Baby Assassins series does). In this latest ass-kicking comic action adventure, Masayuki Kunioka, Kyoto’s most powerful freelance hitman, saves the life of part-time freelance assassin Takuya Manaka (Masayuki Ino), after he botches a big gun procurement assignment. Manaka is understandably suspended from the hitman association and his father, the former #1-ranked hitman in Kyoto, forces him to come home to do chores. It’s up to Kunioka to reignite Manaka’s passion for the kill, and of course it all begins with bouts of spirited training.
Flame Union / フレイムユニオン 最強殺し屋伝説国岡 [私闘編]
SAKAMOTO Yugo / 阪元裕吾
World Premiere
2025, Japan, 103 min
Indie Forum
The Indie Forum, always the section for new discoveries at OAFF, includes 21 Japanese titles, from shorts to mid-length films to features, and encompasses an enormous range of styles and genres. The coveted Japan Cuts Award will be bestowed by the Japan Society of New York on a film from this section.
A Very Straight Neck /「まっすぐな首」
Neo Sora / 空音央
Japan Premiere
2025, Japan, China, 10 min
We would be remiss not mentioning that it includes the Japan premiere of A Very Straight Neck, the Locarno Film Festival award-winning short by heralded director Neo Sora (Happyend, Ryuichi Sakamoto | Opus), starring everyone’s favorite actress, Sakura Ando; and the Director in Focus spotlight on the prolific young helmer Miki Tanaka, who will be represented by 3 short titles, including the world premiere of Blue Amber, featuring the star of Sora’s Happyend, Hayato Kurihara.
Blue Amber / ブルー・アンバー
Miki Tanaka / 田中未来
World Premiere
Japan, 2025, 34 min
Among the many feature-length highlights are 2 world premieres:
Oudai Kojima’s extraordinary Flames of a Flower delivers on the promise he showed with his first feature, also an OAFF premiere back in 2021, Joint. His new work is a timely and compelling tale of personal recovery that draws its inspiration from an actual incident, reported in 2016 but covered up by the government, after Japan sent a 350-member team to join the UN peacekeeping operations (PKO) in war-torn South Sudan. In 2018, two Japanese Self-Defense Force officers who had also participated in the mission committed suicide, but the Ministry of Defense stated there was no connection to their experiences in Africa.
Flames of a Flower /「火の華」
Oudai Kojima / 小島央大
World Premiere
Japan, 2025, 124 min
While Kojima’s new film is not entirely nonfiction, it tackles truths that have been essentially taboo in Japanese cinema. Delving into the dark side of PKOs and addressing the challenges of living with PTSD, Flames of a Flower vividly depicts the harrowing experiences of a former SDF member (played by Ikken Yamamoto, who cowrote the script), who has begun training as a fireworks artisan. His fellow artisans are impressed by his understanding of gunpowder — a material that is paradoxically used to create bullets that kill, as well as fireworks that heal.
Dawn Chorus / もういちどみつめる
Yoshinori Sato / 佐藤慶紀
World Premiere
Japan, 2025, 113 min
Yoshinori Sato (Her Mother, Shinjuku Tiger) returns to Osaka with his new teen drama Dawn Chorus, which was inspired by the need to create a nuanced look at youth crime following revisions to Japan’s Juvenile Law. It stars rising actor Mansaku Takada (The Wandering Moo; Two Seasons, Two Strangers) and the incomparable Mariko Tsutsui (Harmonium, A Girl Missing). Takada plays Yuki, an 18 year old with a complex family background and past. He’s facing the trauma of losing his mother at the same time he’s trying to redefine his own identity, after being released from juvenile detention and being met with a callous world.
His aunt, Noriko (Tsutsui) attempts to help but struggles to communicate in a meaningful way. She does, however, given Yuki a job and tries to listen to him. They gradually warm to each other, until Noriko’s own son shows up one day…
OAFF Theaters
Please be sure to check with the theater before going.