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Screambox is once again heading to Fantastic Fest (September 21 – 28), bringing two brand new Japanese horror films that are going to absolutely blow your collective minds.

The first is Door, an extremely rare home invasion slasher movie from 1988 that has never been screened outside of Japan and has just been remastered. The final 20 minutes are bonkers!

In the film…

“A lonely housewife is held hostage in her own apartment by an increasingly deranged door-to-door salesman in this forgotten home invasion masterpiece.”

Directed by Banmei Takahashi, the story behind Door is extremely interesting.

Many of you may remember Director’s Company, a Japanese production company from 1982-1992 that was made up of many legends of Japanese cinema including Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Sogo Ishii, Shinji Somai, and others.

They made many amazing Japanese films but also broke ground for genre cinema in Japan including the cult classic Evil Dead Trap. Before Evil Dead Trap they...

The North American rights to Reiki Tsuno’s debut feature Mad Cats have been acquired by the Cineverse streaming service Midnight Pulp, Variety reports this morning.

Mad Cats, billed as an action-comedy, will have its Canadian premiere at Fantasia International Film Festival on August 4. The film is also coming to Screambox in 2024.

Written and directed by Tsuno, Mad Cats tells the story of a young man named Taka (Sho Mineo), who embarks on a quest to search for his missing brother Mune (So Yamanaka). With the help of two strange yet amusing new friends, Taka must fight against a pack of gun-slinging monster cats disguised as women.

Yuya Matsuura, Ayane and Michael Aaron Stone also star.

“No more depressing movies from Japan. I want to make movies that make you feel happy,” director Reiki Tsuno said in a statement shared by Variety this morning.

Matthew Kiernan, manager of Midnight Pulp,...

Academy Award® Qualifying Short Shorts Film Festival (Ssff) & Asia 2023 announced the jury members of Live Action Competition, Non-Fiction Competition and Smartphone Film Competition supported by Sony's Xperia. Best short award winners of each Live Action and Non-Fiction competition will be eligible for the nomination of the following year's Academy Award®.

Since last year, in order to take a wider view of international perspectives, the judges in the Asia International category will judge the Non-Fiction Competition, and the judges of the Japan Competition will judge the Smartphone Film Competition supported by Sony's Xperia.

Live Action Competition/International Competition Judges：

34 nominated films among 2282 submissions form 97 countries and regions

Maki Sakai (Actor) / Masato Hagiwara (Actor) / Satoko Yokohama (Film director / Screenwriter)

Live Action Competition/Asia International Competition Judges：

23 nominated films among 593 submissions from 22 countries and regions

Live Action Competition/ Non-Fiction Competition Judges：

13 nominated films among 290 submissions from 59 countries and regions

Adam Torel (Producer...

Not many directors start out with a voice wholly their own, but Katsuhito Ishii's “Promise of August” is a strikingly unique debut from one of Japan's more singular auteurs. It has its fair share of freshman missteps, and there's an unpolished quality to the plotting and performances, but it establishes itself from the opening frame as an off-kilter comedy with a genuine point of view; a confident beginning to a decades-long career.

Buy This Title

on Terracotta

Released three years before Ishii's first feature, “Shark Skin Man and Peach Hip Girl,” it clocks in at only fifty minutes. It this sense, it feels like a novella from a young writer, focused more on creating a mood and documenting the oddities of human behavior than telling a complete story. The threadbare narrative follows three young women as they search the countryside for a weed crop promised by a “marijuana...

As our tribute to the industry comes to an end, we have collected all the interviews that took place during its run, in a series of discussions we feel shed a rather interesting light to what happens behind and around the cameras of Asian cinema. In that fashion, we interviewed Ed Lejano, Earl Jackson, Matthieu Laclau and Yov Moor, Adam Torel, Kazutaka Watanabe, Amir Muhammad, Samuel Jamier, Joey Leung, Mark Schilling, Chiaki Yanagimoto, Tsogtbayar Namsrai, Wafa Ghermani and Huang Juxiang.

1. Ed Lejano – Director, producer, actor and QCinema artistic director 2. Earl Jackson – Asian cinema academic, writer and teacher 3. Matthieu Laclau – Editor 4. Adam Torel – Owner of Third Window Films 5. Kazutaka Watanabe – Producer 6. Amir Muhammad – Filmmaker, publisher, producer and owner of Kuman Pictures 7. Samuel Jamier – Executive producer of New York Asian Film Festival 8. Joey Leung – Owner of Terracotta Distribution 9. Mark Schilling – Film critic for the Tokyo Times, Variety, journalist, translator, and author 10. Chiaki...

Exclusive: Indiecan Entertainment has acquired North American distribution rights to Junta Yamaguchi’s Japanese comedy Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes.

The pic premiered at Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival, winning the White Raven and the Critics Award, before screening at events including Neuchâtel, Bucheon and Fantaspoa, winning the audience award at the latter. It will have its North American premiere at Montreal’s Fantasia International Film Festival.

Makoto Uedawrote the screenplay. It follows a cafe owner who discovers that the TV in his cafe suddenly shows images from the future, but only two minutes forward. Kazuchika Yoshida produced.

The deal was negotiated between Indiecan President Avi Federgreen and Adam Torel, CEO of Third Window Films. Indiecan plans to release the film in Canada and the U.S. following the conclusion of its film festival run.

Indiecan President Avi Federgreen commented, “I am extremely excited to be able to work with...

Tom Mes, in his book “Iron Man: The Cinema of Shinya Tsukamoto” writes: The international breakthrough of Tsukamoto and Tetsuo came at a time when Japanese cinema seemed all but forgotten by foreign minds. The monolithic Akira Kurosawa and a few survivors of the generation that had come to prominence in the 1960s – the filmmakers who made up the Japanese New Wave, most notably Nagisa Osima and Shohei Imamura – still gained praise during the ’80s, but it can be argued that the 1983 Palme d’Or for Imamura’s The Ballad of Narayama in Cannes had less impact than the award for Best Film from Tetsuo at the relatively modest FantaFestival in Rome. The reason is that not only was Tetsuo a film by a director from a new generation, it also brought a new generation of foreign fans to Japanese film. Rather than being built on the remnants of the past,...

Makoto Tezuka's The Legend of the Stardust Brothers (1985) is playing exclusively on Mubi starting March 18, 2021 in many countries in the series Rediscovered.It’s ironic that Legend of the Stardust Brothers, a film about the meteoric rise, fall, and disappearance of two pop idols, nearly suffered the same fate as its protagonists. A giddy live-action cartoon full of surprising cameos, the film’s plot is sketched around insanely catchy tunes by eclectic pop musician and TV personality Hauro Chikada mocking industry, government, celebrity and scene drama. The anarchic musical was the first feature from up-and-comer Tezka, nee Makoto Tezuka, who at 22 had already garnered national attention for his creative shorts. Family name recognition probably didn’t hurt, as he was also the son of “God of Manga” Osamu Tezuka (creator of “Astroboy”). The film is a charming time capsule of Japan at the dawn of its booming bubble economy, and...

Anshul Chauhan’s second feature film “Kontora”, has won the Best Picture in Japanese Feature category at Skip City International D-Cinema Festival 2020. An Indian Animator, CG artist, filmmaker has started his career as an animator in specialized for CG in Japan from 2011. Soon later, he made his first feature film “Bad Poetry Tokyo” (2017) while working at the animation studio. This woman-in-crisis drama won prizes at numerous festivals here and abroad. “Kontora” was another independent project for him, which he gathered the production crews and raised the full amount of the production fee by himself. Despite having no educational background for making films, he started his short films and warmed up the idea of “Kontora” for years. “Kontora” has already won the grand prix at the 23rd Black Nights Film Festival, held in the Estonian capital of Tallinn in 2019. Also, it has received the Obayashi Prize at Japan Cuts in 2020, North...

Nobuhiko Obayashi – (09.01.1938-10.04.2020) born in Onomichi, after his father, a doctor, was called to the battlefront during World War II, he was raised in his early infancy by his maternal grandparents. Through his childhood and adolescence, Obayashi followed many artistic pursuits, including drawing, writing, playing the piano, and possessed a growing interest in animation and film. In 1956 he entered the Liberal Arts department of Seijo University, where he began to work with 8mm and 16mm film. He worked on a series of experimental films, becoming one of the pioneers of this genre in 1960s Japan. His breakout film ‘House‘ (1977), a surrealist horror comedy, was a commercial hit internationally and has garnered a cult following . Throughout the 1980s he then transitioned to directing more mainstream media – including many popular coming-of-age films -and his resulting filmography as a director spanned almost 60 years. Obayashi died on 10 April 2020 at the age of 82 in Tokyo...

By Adam Torel

Third Window Films is quite different to many distributors in the fact that it’s not just incredibly niche, but also run totally ‘in-house’. I started Third Window in 2005, so it’s been 15 years now, and the goal of the label was to release many minor Asian films which probably wouldn’t have gotten released otherwise. As a massive fan of Asian cinema, I wanted to really focus on titles which had never been released before in the West, instead of working like a normal distributor would do in focusing mainly on easily ‘sellable’ and well-known titles. In order to do this, Third Window has been run incredibly tight, with no office, no real staff and keeping as much in house (literally run out of my home) as possible. This means handling as much of the process: from buying rights, making materials, subtitling, filming and editing extras,...

The 2019 nominees for the Best Asian Film award, presented by the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts (Aacta), have been revealed, with nine titles up for the prize including Bong Joon-Ho’s Cannes winner Parasite.

Also on the list are three Indian features: Zoya Akhtar’s Gully Boy, which is India’s submission to the 2020 International Feature Film Oscar race, Thiagarajan Kumararaja’s Super Deluxe, and Sriram Raghavan’s Andhadhun.

Joining them are three nominees from China: Jiao Zi’s Ne Zha, the country’s Oscar entry this year, Zhang Yimou’s Shadow, and Frant Gwo’s The Wandering Earth.

Completing the list are Cathy Garcia-Molina’s Hello Love Goodbye (Philippines) and Makoto Nagahisa’s We Are Little Zombies (Japan).

Parasite scooped Cannes’ Palme d’Or back in May and has been causing box office waves around the globe, grossing more than $100m to date, including $70m in its...

Three Indian and three mainland Chinese films are among the nine feature movies shortlisted for the Best Asian Film Award by the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts.

The Indian selections are box office hit “Andhadhun,” “Super Deluxe, and “Gully Boy,” which premiered in February at the Berlin festival. The Chinese trio includes “Shadow,” sci-fi hit “The Wandering Earth,” and “Ne Zha,” an animation sensation that was named as China’s Oscars hopeful.

The other three are: Philippines box office record breaker “Hello Love Goodbye”; Japan’s “We Are Little Zombies,” and “Parasite,” Bong Joon-ho’s Cannes Palme d’Or winner and South Korea’s Oscar contender.

“Over the past year, the global reach of Asian film has continued to grow with an increasing number of high-quality, creative storylines being recognised at international film festivals and at the local and international box office,” said Aacta.

Judging the entries will...

‘We Are Little Zombies’.

The Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts (Aacta) has revealed the nine films that will compete for this year’s Best Asian Film Award.

This is the third year Aacta has presented the award, which forms the foundation for the organisation’s Asia International Engagement Program. The award is designed to honour the finest films of the past year from 19 Asian regions, reflecting the popularity and importance of Asian films in Australia.

The nominees are: Sriram Raghavan’s Andhadhun (India); Zoya Akhtar’s Gully Boy (India); Cathy Garcia-Molina’s Hello Love Goodbye (Philippines); Jiao Zi’s Ne Zha (China); Bong Joon-Ho’s Palme D’Or winning Parasite (South Korea); Zhang Yimou’s Shadow (China); Thiagarajan Kumararaja’s Super Deluxe (India); Frant Gwo’s The Wandering Earth (China) and Makoto Nagahisa’s We Are Little Zombies (Japan).

The long list of films in competition was reviewed...

A film crew shooting a zombie movie encounters a genuine onslaught of the living dead in the acclaimed horror comedy One Cut of the Dead, which has been acquired by Shudder and will be released on the streaming service in the Us and Canada later this year.

Below, we have the full press release with additional details on the acquisition, and in case you missed it, read Nathan Smith's 5-star Fantastic Fest review of One Cut of the Dead.

Press Release: The little, $27,000 indie zombie comedy that became a box office smash in Japan and around the world is finally coming to North America when One Cut of the Dead debuts on Shudder later this year. AMC Networks’ streaming service for horror, thrillers and the supernatural picked up all rights in the U.S. and Canada to the international hit, which currently holds a 100% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and...

Shudder, the horror specialty streaming service of AMC Networks, has acquired all rights in North America to the hit Japanese zombie comedy “One Cut of the Dead.” The company said that it had also licensed rights to the film for Australia and New Zealand, where it plans to launch later this year.

Made for $27,000, the film became a box office sensation in Japan following its release in two Tokyo theaters in June of last year. It has since earned more than $30 million or 1,000 times its budget.

Shudder negotiated the deal with Adam Torel, whose production and distribution company Third Window Films released the film theatrically in the U.K. and on English-subtitled DVDs. Torel was representing Koji Ichihashi, the president of Enbu Seminar, the Tokyo film school that backed and produced “One Cut.”

In March, Ichihashi told Variety that Enbu was working towards an English-language remake of the film with...

Everyone gets its wrong sometimes, even the big trades, and I am enough of a big boy to admit it would have been very easy for me to reach out to Third Window Films and question the legitimacy of Variety's report.   But, but, it was a trade reporting it!!! Why even question it when a trade is reporting it!?! Thanks, Variety. Now I don't believe is anything.   Regardless. My apologies to Third Window Films and Adam Torel if my report below added to today's frustration.    Here is the tweet from Third Window Films debunking today's earlier report.    [https://twitter.com/thirdwindow/status/1108541289031565312]   File this one under, no, but thanks for not asking.    Variety has reported that the rights to remake Japanese break out...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Adam Torel’s top ten of Japanese movies has always been one of the treats of the year, for all fans of the country’s cinema, since most of his choices are relatively unknown at the time of its publishing. 22 year old Hiroshi Okuyama graduation effort “Jesus” (actual Japanese title is “I Hate Mr. Jesus”) is one of those films. The aforementioned “relatively” part comes into play here, since the film netted Okuyama the New Director award at San Sebastian Film Festival, and has already been bought by Nikkatsu. Let us take things from the beginning though.

The film revolves around Yura, an elementary school student, who finds himself moving with his parents to Nakanojo, a small, snowy village, from Tokyo. Initially, the change has Yura struggling, both at home, where he has to share a room with his grandmother, and in school, where he does not share or even...

Don’t call it a Christmas miracle. “One Cut of the Dead,” the Japanese zombie comedy that has been charming critics on the festival circuit, mysteriously showed up for streaming on Amazon in the United States and the United Kingdom. The only problem? The film’s distributor didn’t approve that version of the film to be on Amazon at all.

The illegal copy caused a frenzy as the powers that be at Third Window Films, which handles distribution and sales of the film, tried to understand what had happened. In a tweet, the company alerted Amazon users of the problem, urging them not to watch the bootleg.

The @amazon and @AmazonUK Prime version of One Cut Of The Dead is an unauthorized bootleg release of the film. As the film’s world sales agent and distributor, we didn’t put it on there and it shouldn’t be there.

Japanese director Uchida Eiji is on a hot streak as of late. Two of his latest features, the Amelie-meets-revenge thriller Greatful Dead, and the self-reflexive look at the indie film scene in Japan Lowlife Love have brought the relatively unknown filmmaker out of the shadows of Japanese indepedent cinema and onto the world stage thanks for exposure from the UK's Third Window Films. Third Window's Adam Torel first got behind Uchida with a home video release of Greatful Dead back in early 2015. Later that year he put the company's money where its mouth is and produced Lowlife Love. That partnership continues with the latest collaboration between Uchida and Torel, Love & Other Cults. We have a first look at the film's new trailer and...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

At the weekend I visited the HQ of excellent UK based distribution outfit Third Window Films where managing director Adam Torel was frantically drumming up cash to support his latest film project. Third Window will once again be teaming up with Greatful Dead (review here) director Uchida Eiji after their recent collaboration on Lowlife Love (review). Shooting as we speak, Kemono Michi (English title Tbc) is described as follows: “Looking at Japan’s rural and backwater countryside, Uchida Eiji strips the wholesome images of former child stars Ito Sairi (Gto – Great Tacher Onizuka) and Suga Kenta (Always Sunset on Third Street) to tell a love story against the backdrop of cult religions, incest, prostitution, porn, gangs and more! Other cast members include another child star Kan...

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...

Last week at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, Lowlife Love had its first screening outside of Japan. The film shows a very sordid look at the Japanese no-budget film industry, in which all people who are hopeful of a cinematic career are endlessly fleeced and abused, especially if they happen to be women. I saw the film and liked it a lot. Two days later I met its director Uchida Eiji, also famous here at Twitch for his fine thriller Greatful Dead, and I interviewed him about Lowlife Love with producer Adam Torel present. Note that there are some spoilers. Nothing too major, but it does close off a plot-avenue or two, and it may give you an impression which way the story goes. TwitchFilm:...

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...

Exclusive: Third Window Films has picked up Japanese porn comedy Make Room for UK distribution and international sales excluding Asia.

The company is also handling the film for festivals worldwide following its Grand Prix win at Yubari International Fantastic Film Festival last month

CEO Adam Torel quickly sealed a deal for the Japanese comedy with Joint Entertainment for Taiwan, and has agreed with Ryohei Masuoka, director of Japan’s Geta Films/Spirits Project, for them to handle other Asian territories.

“It’s a funny and touching film set in the make-up room of a porn set and based on director Kei Morikawa’s experiences in the adult film industry,” said Torel.

“Starring a host of real-life porn stars alongside professional and amateur actors, it was really the stand-out film of Yubari and rightly deserved to pick up the Grand Prix.”

Speaking of splitting the international sales with Masuoka, he said: “Actually, we are both...

Uchida Eiji's Greatful Dead is another in the ridiculously long line of solid releases from the UK's Third Window Films. The film, which focuses on a woman named Nami who obsesses over the lives of solitary figures that she finds in the world around her, is one of those hard-to-categorize films for which Third Window's Adam Torel has a soft spot. Not quite horror, but not quite comedy, and certainly never a horror-comedy, Greatful Dead gracefully toes the line between the two, creating an unique tonal mash-up that will appeal to fans of offbeat cinema.Our own James Marsh reviewed the film out of Fantastic Fest in 2013, and this is part of what he had to say:At the centre of the film, however, is Nami, wonderfully...

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...

Exclusive: Tetsuya Nakashima’s mystery is set to open in UK cinemas in early 2015.

London-based Third Window Films has announced it picked up Japanese mystery The World of Kanako for UK and Ireland from Wild Bunch in Cannes.

Directed by Tetsuya Nakashima, the film stars Koji Yakusho as an ex-cop searching for his missing daughter whose straight-a student façade hid the secret life she led in a hellish underworld.

Third Window Films previously released the director’s Kamikaze Girls, Memories of Matsuko and Confessions as well as Lalapipo, for which he wrote the screenplay.

“All four were released in cinemas, with Confessions, Kamikaze and Matsuko all having massive video sales plus all sold to FilmFour,” noted Adam Torel, CEO of the company.

“Director Nakashima is a real talent in [the] fact that he tackles a completely different genre each time, taking time and passion to mix both entertainment and depth in each. From buddy girl...

UK’s Third Window Films has launched sales at Filmart on Japanese film Be My Baby, set to make its international premiere at the Hong Kong International Film Festival next week.

Be My Baby is directed by Hitoshi One, who previously made the popular romantic comedy Love Strikes!.

The film follows a group of twenty-somethings and their relationships in the two-week aftermath of a house party. It stars Kenta Niikura, Naoko Wakai and Chihiro Shibata.

“Be My Baby is the first film on which I’ve handled sales while not involved as a producer or distributor,” said Adam Torel, Third Window CEO.

“Basically, I really love the film, but it’s a really small film - made in four days on less than £10,000 budget - and the producer and team involved don’t have the ability to promote it themselves so I want to help get it to a larger audience.

“It’s part...

Japanese comedies have never been the easiest films to market in the west. Whereas anime, horror, and classics from famous directors have a ready made fan base, non-genre fare and comedy is a tough sell. A new and unique production team is hoping to change all that by making their first film an international success and laying the groundwork for other, similarly-made, independent fare to follow. The film is Fuku-chan of Fukufuku Flats and the co-production team consists of Adam Torel of Third Window Films (UK), Sabrina Baracett and Thomas Bertacche of Tucker Film (Italy), James Liu of Joint Entertainment (Taiwan) and Stephen Holl of Rapid Eye Movies (Germany) along with the Japanese distributors. The combined weight of the group and the established networks of...

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...

Exclusive: Japan-uk-Italy-Taiwan-Germany co-production of Yosuke Fujita’s Fuku-chan Of FukuFuku Flats

UK-based Third Window Films has announced an unprecedented Japan-uk-Italy-Taiwan-Germany co-production of Fine, Totally Fine director Yosuke Fujita’s upcoming comedy, Fuku-chan Of FukuFuku Flats, with distribution deals in place.

Naoko Arai is credited as planner and producer, and the film is being produced by Keiko Fujimura of Japan’s TV Man Union and Adam Torel of Third Window Films.

It has attached co-producers Sabrina Baracetti and Thomas Bertecche from Italy’s Tucker Films (they are also known as the heads of the Udine Far East Film Festival), James Liu of Taiwan’s Joint Entertainment and Stephan Holl of Germany’s Rapid Eye Movies.

They are all making equity investments and taking their respective territory’s rights.

The film stars popular Yoshimoto comedian Miyuki Oshima (GuGu The Cat, The Handsome Suit) as the main character Fuku-chan in what Torel describes as “a Tootsie-type of situation where a woman...

Good news for fans of Korean cinema in the UK with word that Third Window Films have picked up a trio of titles for UK distribution. The three pictures - Bleak Night, Behind The Camera and Pluto - are a diverse lot, bringing a further breadth of genre and style to a roster which had already added Korean pictures How To Use Guys With Secret Tips and Boomerang Family earlier this year. Here's how Third Window's Adam Torel describes the new additions:First off is Shin Su-Won's Pluto, a dark look at bullying, class hierarchy and murder in an elite high school where people will do anything to get into prestigious Universities. Pluto was a runaway hit at last year's Busan Film Festival and went on...

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...

In our original profile of the UK's Third Window Films, I addressed the lack of Korean releases and asked founder Adam Torel why this happened. He responded:i moved away from the Korean film scene as I felt it was moving away from my own tastes. I got into Korean cinema around 1999/2000 and thought my favourite year was 2001 where many great genre-mix-up films were released. I loved Korean cinema as I felt they were making their films for the Korean market and the tastes of their audience, but as Korean cinema became more and more popular in the West and Japan they started to make too many films for other markets.We at Twitch are thus happy to announce that Third Window films will give...

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...

Our good friends at one of the world's finest DVD distribution labels, Third Window Films, have given us an early look at their 2013 schedule, and it looks awesome!Several of these titles are films we've already previewed for Twf in past months, but there are some titles that I'm very happy to share with fans for the first time today! Rather than blather on about it myself, Twf head honcho Adam Torel gave me a fantastic rundown of the titles on which he's been working very hard so I'm going to let him take it away:After a very turbulent 2012 in which we spent the first half of the year trying to recover from the Riots which saw all our stock burnt down in the...

Our good friends at Third Window Films have given Twitch the scoop on their latest acquisitions. Here's the word from Twf's Adam Torel on Kurosawa Kiyoshi's Eyes of the Spider and Serpent's Path:Third Window Films are pleased the announce the acquisition of 2 lesser-known classics from Japanese auteur Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Tokyo Sonata, Cure) - 'Eyes of the Spider' and 'Serpent's Path' for DVD releases in Spring 2013.When oddball auteur Kiyoshi Kurosawa received an eccentric offer to make two films in two weeks, on a low budget and using the same cast, the result was the cinematic equivalent of fraternal twins. Though both Eyes of the Spider and Serpent's Path are gangster films about the desire for revenge, and both films feature a protagonist named Nijima...