Yoshida Daihachi’s Teki Cometh proved to be the big winner of the Tokyo International Film Festival’s major awards categories that were revealed Wednesday night at a glitzy ceremony in the Japanese capital. Teki Cometh, a feature adaptation of a book by celebrated Japanese novelist Tsutsui Yasutaka, won the festival’s top prize, the Tokyo Grand Prix,
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Taiwanese-Burmese filmmaker Midi Z caused a stir and gained good notices with his 2019 film Nina Wu, which dealt with the exploitation of women in entertainment, and was released in the midst of the global #MeToo movement, a long overdue public reckoning for powerful men who had committed acts of sexual violence and misconduct. Selected
New technologies led by artificial intelligence and virtual production are profoundly changing visual effects but are still “another paintbrush” in the service of storytelling, says VFX veteran George Murphy. “Virtual production is not just a tool for VFX; it’s a storytelling tool that allows actors to feel fully immersed in the scene, instead of having
Hirokazu Koreeda confessed he had wanted to have an in-depth talk with Indian filmmaker Payal Kapadia ever since he saw her film All We Imagine as Light at the Cannes Film Festival this year. On Tuesday, the Japanese auteur finally got his chance as part of the intimate TIFF Lounge talk series held during Tokyo
One of the finest Japanese independent films of the past few years is finally landing in U.S. cinemas this weekend. Second-time director Kei Chika-ura’s Great Absence, which debuted to strong reviews at the 2023 Toronto Film Festival and later won the best actor prize in San Sebastian for its star, Japanese screen icon Tatsuya Fuji (In the
Less than a decade ago, the Shanghai International Film Festival was the preeminent annual hotspot for Hollywood and European dealmakers determined to forge alliances and carve out a foothold in China’s then-booming commercial film sector. In the post-pandemic era, however, as the Chinese industry continues to mature and the Hollywood hype over the country’s market
Chinese sales company Parallax Films has notched a batch of sales deals for director Qiu Jiongjiong‘s Locarno 2021 jury prize-winning historical drama A New Old Play. The acclaimed Chinese indie film has sold to France’s Carlotta Films, Japan’s Katsuben Cinema Club, and Singapore’s Cineaste Production House for distribution across all Southeast Asian territories, excluding Indonesia and Vietnam.
Japanese anime master Hayao Miyazaki is revered in China as much as he is anywhere. The 83-year-old filmmaker’s Oscar-winning swan song The Boy and the Heron opened last Wednesday in China to take advantage of the country’s Qingming public holiday and by Sunday it had earned $73 million — more than its totals in both
Japanese anime master Hayao Miyazaki’s Oscar-winning swan song The Boy and the Heron has taken flight at China’s box office in a major way. The enigmatic Studio Ghibli hit opened in China on Wednesday and soared to $13.7 million (RMB 99.1 million), nudging aside Warner Bros and Legendary Entertainment’s prior box-office champ Godzilla x Kong:
The ever-busy Japanese character actor Tadanobu Asano — currently having a moment as one of the stars of Disney’s hit samurai series Shōgun — has joined the cast of Thai director Pen-ek Ratanaruang‘s upcoming culinary thriller Morte Cucina. The actor and director last collaborated two decades ago on the romantic crime film Last Life in the Universe (2003),
Eiko Ishibashi provides more than just music for Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s movies, with her compositions being central to the Japanese filmmaker’s dramas, so much so that they take on the life of a supporting character. There have been consecutive Asian Film Awards (AFA) wins for Ishibashi’s work on, first, the Oscar-winning Drive My Car and, this