Asian Movie Pulse

“AnyMart” marks the debut feature by Yusuke Iwasaki, a Japanese screenwriter-director born in 1993. After studying at the Faculty of Literature at Keio University and joining Tohokushinsha Film Corporation in 2017, he made his first commercial in 2019 (for which he won the Grand Prix at the 63rd ACC Tokyo Creativity Awards). After few years, he made his film debut with a shor...

The opening and closing captions on Nanase Nakamura’s “Unknown” highlight that there is a lot of unaccounted money floating about; and how you respond to coming across any of that money is very much dependent on your circumstances. In what is perhaps a moral question as old as time, Nakamura’s short feels familiar in other ways too.

“At the Lovehotel” is the feature directorial debut of Santa Ikegame, who also writes the screenplay. Ikegame has long been active in theater as the head of the company Machilda Apartman, where he has developed a style focused on ensemble storytelling, the small shifts in people’s emotions, and the realism of everyday spaces. The movie brings this sensibility to the screen th...

The 30th Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (BIFAN) has unveiled 11 features selected for its international competition section, bringing together world premieres, festival favorites, and bold new works from emerging genre filmmakers.

Asia’s foremost genre-focused film festival is set to return to Bucheon City from July 2 to 12, bringing a wide-ranging ar...

In a society often associated as much with conformity as Japan, it is striking to witness intellectuals and authors like Noe Ito or Yuriko Miyamoto gradually being reassessed. During their lifetimes, both women faced harsh criticism and social ostracism, resulting in arrests, censorship and bans on their publications. Similarly, the writings of Kaneko Fumiko have undergone a ...