The next generation of filmmakers show deep promise; sometimes you just have to go very far to find them. The best things I saw at this year’s Tokyo International Film Festival were all world premieres arriving in the last days of a year-long cinema cycle that begins early, runs late, and recirculates the same two-dozen-ish titles until they’re defined by largely unanimous critical stances. It’s easy, above all convenient, to look at a list of unknown works by even-more-obscure filmmakers and assume they’ve not ascended for good reason. Lord knows that suspicion has times it proves wholly correct. I also would—please, God, I hope this goes without saying—never trade that benign deference for the great satisfaction of first contact, nor understand what gaps (for festivals and distributors alike) some of these films can fall through.
What proved largely admirable but didn’t quite make this best-of-fest cut—Takenoshin Yaza’s Hinotama: Ball of Fire and Shingo Matsumura’s Between Us especially come to mind—did so on the basis of a few choices I found charming as much as they’re too-impulsive, or charming precisely for their overzealousness. Where more and more big-ticket titles nowdays engender a response that largely comes down to “yes, nice, I understand” and the ensuing desire to get on with one’s day, what a fortune contending with choices that spark some thought. Regarding the 24-year-old Yaza: I found enough in Hinotama intelligent and surprising to suggest his debut feature will come to be known as the instigation of a notable career. (For a deeper take on its unique strengths, I’d suggest listening to my podcast conversation with Mark Asch.)
Below are some thoughts on Tokyo’s 2026 premieres, but it’s best to start by looking back.
A Note on Three Restorations
Though Tokyo efficiently showcases new work by talent unknown in North America, most often the world, well-programmed retrospectives and restorations will naturally eclipse most anything else. Even by ongoing standards, their 2026 edition was a cut above. Leading the pack was a 13-title Kenji Mizoguchi retrospective housing seven new restorations. While I could’ve saved some time (and seen more of the city) by finally watching The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum on my flight (or in any of the many years a decent copy has been available) I allowed sentiment—the kind born of commingling a long-fulfilled viewing with a perfect setting—to rule the evening and attended a screening at the National Film Archive of Japan in their Theatre OZU. I was gratified to discover that one can be on the other side of the world, see a Mizoguchi film in a theater named after Ozu, and still encounter a guy wearing a black graphic tee and headphones.
Roman Porno has been on many minds of late. Just before New York’s Japan Society hosts a retrospective of Nikkatsu’s strongest exports, Tokyo presented three titles for a 55th-anniversary series: Shinji Sōmai’s Love Hotel (subject of a long discussion I hosted last year), Kichitaro Negishi’s Wet Weekend (1979), and Shusuke Kaneko’s Last Cabaret (1988). Roman Porno’s auteur-permissiveness is well encapsulated by this trio: the meanness of Wet Weekend was nicely countervailed by Last Cabaret’s genuine humanism; Last Cabaret’s sentimental sex becomes distorted once seen alongside Wet Weekend’s nasty transactions; and either’s classical form are reconsidered when placed against Sōmai’s bolder, sanity-stretching long takes. Temptations to joke about watching these movies for the mise-en-scène are beside the point, because what distinct mise-en-scène between them all—a mini-history of basic aesthetics and personal form across a less-than-ten-year span.
Sōmai was something of a fixture at this year’s festival, as he should be at any other. Showing alongside Love Hotel were world-premiere restorations of Tokyo Heaven and The Catch, the latter of which I’m disappointed to miss by a distance of 24 hours. The former, however, I saw and (years since looking at a ruddy DVD rip) found reinstated within this major filmmaker’s canon: its vision of threatened adolescence accords with the likes of Moving or Typhoon Club, and most manner of its extended takes jibe with memories of films I’ve not seen in some years. But its fantastical treatment of the afterlife (classic Hollywood backdrops, Obayashi-esque in-camera effects) barely comports with much I could identify in other works’ strenuously earth-bound formalism. I might be more dazzled by Tokyo Heaven‘s mid-film cooking sequence than anything else he ever achieved, and am mostly excited to see it again to figure out if a Texas switch happens in a really concentrated semi-extended image. I believe Cinema Guild will release both of these in North America, adding to their collection of an artist it seems we’re only starting to grasp decades since his death.
I’m Nothing Special Really (Navid Mohammadzadeh)
Both this film’s official synopsis and a conversation with Kenji Ishizaka (who programmed it in Tokyo’s Asian Future section) sought to stress I’m Nothing Special Really as the vision of an unseen Iran: plenty of smoking, drinking, and recognizable socializing with no mention of authoritarian government and zero site of a hijab. Whether one finds this a refreshing break from the common western perception of a large, multivalent nation or somehow irresponsible in light of national turmoil: your call! Knock us out. I can say that, from moment one, I was taken with Mohammadzadeh’s visual-aural-verbal navigations, starting with a house party that mines minor interest from unknown characters until it localizes to a lovers’ dispute and relationship’s demise. Just when I suspected Hong Sangsoo’s influence on the contemporary festival movie had waned, I’m Nothing Special Really makes a major perspective shift—nothing too logical or pat, purely endemic to its sororal undertones.
The Intertwining (Akira Yamamoto)
Sometimes you just know. Maybe it’s an instigating scenario that, while odd and surprising, isn’t built on shock or seems desperate to capitalize the entirety of one’s attention. Perhaps it’s the next scene’s ultra-intuitive camera movement that balances on two characters’ feelings as much as their physics. Before a tangible premise emerged, I strongly sensed that The Intertwining would mark a total standout, and effectively nothing across 130 minutes challenged this as the best thing I’d see in Tokyo all year. (Only one title below also vies for such position.) I find it profoundly easy to get comfortable with a well-polished Japanese drama—largely static wide shots, defined but ostentation-free color-grading, resounding silences—but it’s another thing to realize nary a shot is misjudged, extraneous, wasted. (To wit: why cut from someone walking down stairs to walking outside when you can capture it all in one pan that places equal emphasis between a character’s movement and the natural soundscape?) I was only delighted by how Yamamoto works with rigid concepts (medium close-ups, shot-reverse) so he can gradually expand his formal playbook up to and including a final shot that pushes its vocabulary yet one further. Yamamoto’s script offers a decent amount of talking, but he mostly wound up recording walking and watching. Is its story convoluted? Sure. So was Asako I & II, and if you accepted there Erika Karata having a more expressive face than just about any working American actress, you’ll also like it here. Speaking of: this has not received one fraction of the attention afforded another 2026 premiere from a former student of Kiyoshi Kurosawa, but (with respect to that fine film and great director) I like The Intertwining—on the basis of its author’s distinct intelligence and sense of their mentor’s specter, which are not synonymous but sure do overlap—better.
The Paper Flower (Chezhiyan)
I entered this, as I do so many films in Tokyo, on the dual basis of basic promise—placement in a strong program, a nice still, something compelling in the brief synopsis—and filling time between a previous movie and that night’s dinner. Even by such standards, The Paper Flower did not get off to a fantastic start. As photographed by writer-director Chezhiyan, this largely shirks itself of opulence, suggesting either an iPhone for image capture or less-treated digital image as final result. Its interiors (a book fair, a character’s lonely apartment) were drab, its general mood depressive. But my doubts were quelled within single-digit minutes by a series of crossfades that split the difference between static and kinetic, expressive and intuitive. Surrounding aesthetic concerns aside, Chezhiyan’s staging is roundly excellent: he can frame two characters in a mobile shot to let their expressions do the speaking, and when they finally do talk it’s staged in a longing manner—always talking about the past, never the future—that brought to mind, superficially or not, Marguerite Duras. I came out of Paper Flower thinking Chezhiyan, who’s directed only one other feature, signals a significant new talent, and was accordingly devastated to learn he passed in July. His film will have to stand as a question mark of what might’ve been.
Saravah (Hironori Kujiraoka)
Hong Sangsoo also looms over Saravah, which (slight time-jump aside) plays less with structure than I’m Nothing Special Really but does one better that film’s relationship crosscurrents. The South Korean’s frequent investigation of life through art and vocation is paralleled by Hironori Kujiraoka’s scenario: two men (Ritsu Otomo, Ōsuke Tokunaga) are tasked with ghostwriting fluffy dramas under a pen name established by an old college friend (Mai Matsumoto), sparking a reunion that unearths longstanding resentments and desires. Anyone at all on its art-vs-artist wavelength will find material to ponder responsibilities inherent to representing another person, of hiding oneself in their work; Saravah, however, is smart to never actually dwell on such questions lest it hinder a relentless accumulation of character detail and variable scenarios. Kujiraoka (who also rather amply edited and co-shot the film) runs the constant risk of over-convolution with adjacent plots and secondary characters, yet instead of intervening they all intersect, complement, underline, and rewatching the first 30 minutes left me duly impressed at how he places so much before us without suggesting much Chekhovian intent. Extra credit for its late-in-the-game title-card drop, a long-dormant trend I was once happy to see gone and found cannily revived for the sake of psychology and structure.
Yamazaki Riverside – Over an Actor’s Shoulder (Isshin Inudo)
Maybe this is a bit of a cheat. Between a festival’s deluge of new films and doing whatever’s possible to retain Tokyo’s atmosphere, I find myself gravitating to the country’s incalculable cinematic heritage, about which we don’t have time or need to get into here. Except to say Over an Actor’s Shoulder does well to locate a sliver of that in Tsutomu Yamazaki, whose credits—High and Low, Kagemusha, Demon Pond, multiple films by Juzo Itami (most notably Tampopo), collaborations with Nobuhiko Obayashi, Takashi Miike, Hiroshi Teshigahara, Shinji Sōmai, Takashi Yamazaki, Kinji Fukasaku, and Yōichi Sai—could serve the syllabus for a pretty good class on post-war Japanese cinema. Isshin Inudo doesn’t exactly break the famous-subject documentary mold by offering film clips, behind-the-scenes stills, and contemporary interviews that capture Yamazaki in his current state. But a 62-year-spanning-cut from a grimly utilitarian, circa-2025 chemotherapy session to his Kurosawa-lensed performance opposite Toshiro Mifune is a nice condensation of life: whatever our achievements, their legacy, and many acquaintances with sublimity, nothing protects us from the inevitable. Still, Yamazaki persists, and final scenes of a cancer-free actor once more plying his craft—discussed by him and numerous figures of Japanese cinema, most notably Ken Watanabe, as a philosophy deserving the utmost respect and seriousness—supply more plain and simple hope than any film I saw at Tokyo this year.
Read the rest of our Tokyo coverage here.
The post The Best Films, Old and New, from the 39th Tokyo International Film Festival first appeared on The Film Stage.
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