Family relationships run through the Asian films that Tokyo International Film Festival programmer Ishizaka Kenji has picked for this year’s edition. Amid what he calls today’s geopolitical volatility, filmmakers across Asia are turning their cameras on the smallest foundational unit around them: the family.
Tokyo International Film Festival (Credits: Variety)
Family Dramas Dominate Tokyo Festival’s Asian Lineup
While it is hard to pinpoint an exact catalyst for the surge in family-driven drama, Ishizaka told Variety, what is undeniable is that filmmakers share an instinctive urge to re-examine family and sibling bonds. Ishizaka has programmed Asian cinema at the festival since 2007, when most submissions were still shot on film, and he has watched the medium and the movies change together.
The shift from 35mm prints and VHS tapes to DVDs, streaming links, and downloadable screeners changed what films looked like. Freed from the need to reload film, Asian directors leaned into long running times built on unbroken takes, and so-called slow cinema spread across the region. Two of its leading auteurs took top prizes at major European festivals in the 2010s: Thailand’s Apichatpong Weerasethakul won the Palme d’Or at Cannes for Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, and the Philippines’ Lav Diaz won Venice’s Golden Lion for The Woman Who Left.
Tokyo Festival Asian Future and the Rise of Maindie Cinema
Ishizaka also oversees Asian Future, the festival’s competition for young Asian filmmakers. Its 10 titles this year include Katski Flores’ Edjop from the Philippines, Kim Hyun-min’s On the Heights from South Korea, Chezhiyan’s The Paper Flower from India, Azamat Shargyn’s Shyrmauyq from Kazakhstan, Ariani Darmawan’s Jani Be Good from Indonesia, and Kujiraoka Hironori’s Saravah from Japan.
The line between studio fare and independent film has blurred considerably, he says. In the Philippines, a national cinema often described as enjoying its Third Golden Age since 2005, mainstream stars are actively boarding indie projects after falling in love with bold, original scripts, spawning the portmanteau maindie cinema. Directors Brillante Mendoza and Jun Robles Lana, who switch easily between commercial and small-scale indie work, are key links between the two worlds.
If the 2010s belonged to Southeast Asian cinema, Ishizaka says the story of the 2020s is still being written, with Taiwan and South Korea singled out for strong public funding and institutional backing, and an exciting wave of filmmakers from China’s autonomous regions stepping into the spotlight.
Source: Variety — read the full story there.
