TOKYO FILMeX 2024

Competition Films

This year’s FILMeX Competition comprises 10 new films by emerging filmmakers in Asia, including several that have already scooped up prizes at prestigious festivals. None of the films in Competition this year were made in Japan — but don’t let that prevent you from exploring the lineup.

Acclaimed Chinese filmmaker Lou Ye, a FILMeX regular whose work is often featured (including Suzhou River and The Shadow Play) will preside over the international jury, along with New York’s Museum of Modern Art Curator of Film and New Directors/New Films Co-chair La Frances Hui and French producer Catherine Dussart (Rithy Panh’s Meeting with Pol Pot, Min Bahadur Bham’s Shambala, Amos Gitaï’s Shikun). The panel will award the Grand Prize (¥700,000) and the Special Jury Prize (¥300,000) on the festival’s penultimate night. There will also be an Audience Award chosen from across all sections, and a Student Jury Prize for the Competition films.

Inspired by the death in Nepal of director Lo Yi-Shan’s best friend, Chun, during a trekking trip that she had planned to join him on, this is a beautifully personal documentary that follows the path of the original journey. Feeling intense sorrow and remorse, Lo sets out to find meaning and hope in her loss, deploying a uniquely stylish approach for a first-person narrative. The film earns the “Made in Japan” label because the composition and editing of the work was recreated during Lo’s residency in snowy Yamagata Prefecture.

After the Snowmelt / 雪解けのあと

After the Snowmelt / 雪解けのあと
Director: Lo Yi-Shan / ルオ・イーシャン
Taiwan, Japan / 2024 / 110 min

Inspired by the death in Nepal of director Lo Yi-Shan’s best friend, Chun, during a trekking trip that she had planned to join him on, this is a beautifully personal documentary that follows the path of the original journey. Feeling intense sorrow and remorse, Lo sets out to find meaning and hope in her loss, deploying a uniquely stylish approach for a first-person narrative. The film earns the “Made in Japan” label because the composition and editing of the work was recreated during Lo’s residency in snowy Yamagata Prefecture.

Diamonds in the Sand 

Diamonds in the Sand
Director: Janus Victoria / ジャヌス・ビクトリア
Japan, Malaysia, Philippines / 2024 / 102 min

Manila-based filmmaker Janus Victoria has already made a documentary about Japan’s alarmingly high rate of “lonely deaths,” and here she explores the impact of the phenomenon on others. Yoji (star Lily Franky) is a divorced salaryman living alone in Tokyo after his doting mother dies. When the decomposing body of an elderly neighbor is found, he begins to confront his own middle-aged angst. When he meets Minerva, a Filipina caregiver working in Japan to support her daughter back home, Yoji finds himself abandoning all caution and following her to Manila.

The Height of the Coconut Trees / 椰子の高さ

The Height of the Coconut Trees / 椰子の高さ
Director: Du Jie / ドゥ・ジエ
Japan / 2024 / 110 min

Director Du Jie is better known as the acclaimed cinematographer of such box-office hits as the Detective Chinatown trilogy, but after relocating to Japan, has written/directed/shot/produced his own feature. A story of love, loss, the fragility of life, and the invisible boundary between the human and spirit worlds, The Height of the Coconut Trees is just as enigmatic as its title.

Right before her honeymoon is about to begin, Sugamoto’s fiancé leaves her. Rather than throwing away the money she’d spent on their travel tickets—and to work through her conflicted emotions—she decides to take the trip alone, and reaches the final destination in a remote village known as a suicide haven. There, Sugamoto encounters Mochida, who runs a small inn but is also trapped in past emotional ties. Their encounter proves cathartic to both… as well as to others who are mostly unseen, but definitely felt.

Ulysses / ユリシーズ

Ulysses / ユリシーズ
Director: Hikaru Uwagawa / 宇和川輝
Japan, Spain / 2024 / 73 min

A Japan-Spain co-production, this debut film by Japanese-Spanish filmmaker Hikaru Uwagawa is an omnibus of three stories, all unconnected. The first, set in Madrid, follows a young Russian mother who’s been living alone with her eight-year-old son since his father left them to “look for treasure.” The second, set in San Sebastian, follows a Japanese traveler who meets a young Basque woman and is introduced to her friends, although he knows that he will leave one day. The third is set in Maniwa, Okayama Prefecture, as a young man returns home during Obon, where his family is preparing to honor his grandfather.