Makoto Nagahisa leverages the evocative power of visuals and sounds to plunge the spectator into a subjective experience of subjects who only appear as silenced within the media, with the expulsed human ‘trash’ produced by the contemporary societal Other.
Category: Crime
Unchained (2026) review [Camera Japan Festival 2026]
With his latest narrative, Keisuke Yoshida (Blue (2021)) turns a cinematic glance at juvenile delinquency. Yet, what urged him to tackle this societal symptom was not simply an interest, but the need to question the societal environment he grew up in and offer this result of elaboration to the audience. While Keisuke Yoshida saw…
Short Movie Time: Orange of Daydreams (2026) review
McCurtain brings Mariya’s transition from a space without love to a space bursting with love in a very heartwarming way and visually engaging alive.
All Greens (2025) review
Takashi Koyama delivers a coming-into-being narrative that effectively and satisfactorily blends social drama, dark comedy, and musical moments.
Gozu (2003) review/analysis [Fantasia 2026]
Takashi Miike delivers a cinematographic gift, a surreal masterpiece that stays with the spectator long after the credits have faded.
Bye Bye Love (1974) review
A true classic of political cinema.
Night Flower (2025) review [Nippon Connection 2026]
Eiji Uchida delivers a highly moving drama of motherhood.
SAI: Disaster (2025) review [Nippon Connection 2026]
Yutaro Seki and Kentaro Hirase deliver an experience that, in our view, has everything to become a cult-phenomenon, so do not sleep on it.
Fantasia International Film Fest: Japanese Films not to miss.
Find out our recommendations of this year’s Fantasia Film Festival.
Ando (2025) review [Nippon Connection 2026]
Arai might be the fresh blood that the thriller genre thirsts for in Japan. However, only time will tell.
Yokohama BJ Blues (1981) review
Eiichi Kudo delivers an unhurried atmospheric neo-noirish vehicle for Yusaku Matsuda, radically undone of any form of tension.
Suzuki=Bakudan (2025) review
A thrilling ride that brutally confronts the spectator with the effects of the over-emphasis of pleasure and consumption within social interactions on the subject
Party 7 (2000) review
Ishii elevates the staging of the truth of the phallus with many moments of refined interactional absurdity and a finale that, in an inimitable fashion, exposes lack and castration.
Wolves, Pigs and Men (1964)
Fukasaku and Junya Sato’s decision to go beyond Nikkatsu’s Borderless Action and Toei’s nostalgic Ninkyo fantasies to critique the capitalistic current within the post-war societal field and its perverting effects on interpersonal bonds gave birth to a shockingly beautiful experience that is as relevant today as it was in the sixties.
Blazing Fists (2025) review
Miike delivers a drama of hope, a narrative that shows, in a satisfying manner, that a subject can materialize himelf within in the ring and by punching and kicking the demeaning discourses concerning criminality within the Japanese Other into shreds.