Category: Directors

The Parades (2024) review

A narrative that fulfills its promise, allowing the spectator to fleetingly commemorate his or her ‘losses’.

Love Letter (1995)

Iwai’s film is not one of the greatest Japanese romance narratives, but one of the greatest films of becoming able to love again. 

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.  

Undead lovers (2024) review

Matsui delivers a heartwarming romance narrative that, due to its fresh approach to certain tropes of the genre, rises above the common derivative romance drivel Japan usually produces.

Cloud (2024) review

Kurosawa delivers a biting critique of way capitalism and consumerism has transformed our subjectivity and the way we interact with others.

Evil Does not Exist (2023) review

Ryusuke Hamaguchi offers a highly meditative exploration of the position of violence within the natural Real and the human symbolic, the realm of speech.

Red Peony Gambler: Gambler’s Obligation (1969)

What invites us to qualify Suzuki’s narrative as a classic is not simply his continuation of Yamashita’s visual adoration of Junko Fuji, but his effective transformation of the Ninkyo thread into an exploration of the transgressive nature of desire as such.

How Dare You? (2025) review [Camera Japan Festival]

With her narrative, Mipo O delivers one of the most convincing arguments to parents to create space for the subjectivity of their child and to take their signifiers – their pleasures, pressures, worries, fights, and frustrations – seriously.  

Revolver Lily (2023) review

A very enjoyable action-thriller that succeeds in satisfying the spectator thirsting for exciting action-pieces.