Yoji Yamada delivers an incredibly touching experience – possibly his swangsong – for cinephiles to savour.
Category: Movies
Moon In The Ordinary (2025) review [Nippon Connection 2026]
Spectators who haven’t had similar life-experiences might struggle to emotionally invest into the characters and the narrative.
At the Lovehotel (2026) review [Nippon Connection 2026]
Santa Ikegami delivers a self-assured debut that does not easily give away its thematical message.
All About Lily Chou-Chou (2001) review-analysis
A modern classic, one of the best, if not the best, cinematic experiences of the ‘00.
A Unique Country In Asia (2025) review [Nippon Connection 2026]
A film that fully embraces the political dimension pink film once was known for.
Fujiko (2026) review [Nippon Connection 2026]
An incredibly satisfying feel-good experience about personal freedom, about holding on to one’s desire within a societal field that seeks to suffocate it.
Mag Mag (2025) review [Nippon Connection 2026]
Yuriyan Retriever delivers a satisfying film of subjective growth, yet not without a highly ironic aftertaste.
Long Night (2025) review [Nippon Connection 2026]
A self-assured debut, wielding the filmic frame to stage the alienation of the contemporary subject, the failure of imaginary fictions, and the disruptive effect of avoiding Otherness,
The Deepest Space In Us (2025) [Nippon Connection 2026]
Chikuma utilizes his atmospheric blend of intimacy and alienation to assert that the societal field will always fail the Otherness of its subjects and, more importantly, that the deepest space in us is something that continually escapes us.
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.
Blue Boy Trail (2025) review [Nippon Connection 2026]
Kasho Iizuka delivers a heartfelt demand to the spectator to go beyond the mere societal and ideological question of gender and consider the right of the subject to carve out his own singular space of ego-contentment.
Anymart (2026) review [Nippon Connection 2026]
A darkly twisted comical horror narrative that exposes the dynamic of repressive societal violence and what the Japanese societal field seeks to refuse.
Yokohama BJ Blues (1981) review
Eiichi Kudo delivers an unhurried atmospheric neo-noirish vehicle for Yusaku Matsuda, radically undone of any form of tension.
The Snow Woman (1968)
Tokuzo Tanaka’s film remains, up until this day, an incredibly satisfying tragic romance-horror.
Recommendations: Nippon Connection 2026
Do not miss any of these films at this year’s Nippon Connection.