The Toronto International Film Festival is back for a celebratory 49th edition from September 5 to 15! The festival continues its unbroken streak of representing the best in Japanese Cinema, including Japanese co-productions and a splash of the Japanese Diaspora.
TIFF 2024 welcomes back the Cannes-winning genre-defying veteran KUROSAWA Kiyoshi with his latest psychological thriller Cloud, and spotlights emerging Japanese filmmakers to look out for at future festivals. Featuring OKUYAMA Hiroshi‘s ice dancing drama My Sunshine, UGANA Kenichi‘s punk rock anthem The Gesuidouz, and SORA Neo‘s dystopian Tokyo future in Happyend (we previously screened Director Sora’s documentary Ainu Neno An Ainu).
The Japan Foundation, Toronto is proud to be a continued supporter of the Toronto International Film Festival through our Film Showing Abroad Grant Program.
Japanese Feature Films:
Cloud
YOSHII Ryosuke is an ordinary person, who supports himself by reselling things on the internet. He carelessly earns grudges by people around him and, in the end, he is dragged into a desperate struggle that risks his life.
Directed by KUROSAWA Kiyoshi • North American Premiere
Japan • 2024 • 123min • Japanese
The Gesuidouz
From rising cult filmmaker UGANA Kenichi, a misfit horror-themed rock band moves to the Japanese countryside to write the greatest punk anthem in the world.
Directed by UGANA Kenichi • World Premiere
Japan • 2024 • 93min • Japanese
Happyend
Near-future Tokyo, the threat of a catastrophic quake looms. Two friends prank their principal before graduation, leading to school surveillance installation.
Directed by SORA Neo • North American Premiere
Japan, USA • 2024 • 113min • Japanese
My Sunshine ぼくのお日さま
Two young skaters, polar opposites in personality, team up to train for a figure skating duo, their growing bond blurring the lines between partners and more as winter unfolds.
Directed by OKUYAMA Hiroshi • North American Premiere
Japan, France • 2024 • 90min • Japanese
Japanese Co-Productions:
Grand Tour
Edward, civil servant, flees fiancée Molly on their wedding day in Rangoon, 1917. His travels replace panic with melancholy. Molly, set on marriage, amused by his escape, trails him across Asia.
Directed by Migeul GOMES • North American Premiere
Portugal, Italy, France, Germany, Japan, China • 2024 • 129min • Portuguese
Scénarios
The last completed film by the veteran Jean-Luc Godard, finalized the day before his assisted death in September 2022, Scénarios folds together many of his lifelong inquiries into a precise, sober treatise on art, cinema, language, and death.
(Programming notes by Jesse Cumming)
Directed by Jean-Luc GODARD • France, Japan • 2024 • 18min • French, German
Exposé du film annonce du film “Scénario”
Conceptualized by Godard and shot by his trusted collaborator Fabrice Aragno, with Exposé du film annonce du film “Scénario” the maestro — cigar in hand — presents a guided tour of a scrapbook-meets-storyboard for a feature left unfinished.
(Programming notes by Jesse Cumming)
Directed by Jean-Luc GODARD • France, Japan • 2024 • 36min • French
Japanese Diaspora:
Amarela
During the World Cup final in 1998, a football-loving Japanese Brazilian teenager in São Paulo copes with rising tensions, in André Hayato Saito’s poignant and powerful drama.
Directed by André Hayato SAITO • Brazil • 2024 • 15min • Portuguese
