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Skip City International D-Cinema Festival which started in 2004 in Kawaguchi City, Saitama Prefecture, has been held every year as a “gateway for emerging talent” centered on the International Competition and the Japanese Film Competition (features and shorts). The festival launched the careers of Kazuya Shiraishi (Last of the Wolves), Ryota Nakano (The Asadas), Shinichiro Ueda (One Cut of the Dead), Shinzo Katayama (Siblings of the Cape) and many other directors who are leading the Japanese film industry as top runners and whose new movies audiences are looking forward to seeing.

The 18th edition will be held virtually on the streaming platform “Cinema Discoveries” for 9 days from Saturday, September 25th to Sunday, October 3rd, in order to prevent the spread of the coronavirus infection and ensure the safety of audience and related visitors.

From left to right: Director Tsutomu Tsuchikawa, Programming Director Toshiyuki Hasegawa, Yumiko Kimura

On Wednesday, September 1st, we...

After six days packed with films, workshops, lectures and film talks, the 21st Nippon Connection Film Festival ended on Sunday, June 6, 2021 with an online award ceremony. Due to the pandemic, the world’s biggest festival for Japanese cinema once more took place entirely online. The closing ceremony was broadcast via livestream from the festival center at Künstlerhaus Mousonturm in Frankfurt. All four award winners tuned in live from Japan. The numerous positive reactions of the audience via social media proved that the atmosphere of the Nippon Connection Festival, characterized by a lively exchange and encounters, also worked in the digital space.

Rikiya Imaizumi

The audience could vote online for three audience awards. The sixteenth Nippon Cinema Award, sponsored by Bankhaus Metzler in Frankfurt and endowed with a prize money of 2,000 euros, went to the queer film “his”. Director Rikiya Imaizumi offers a hopeful story about the revision of traditional gender...