The Toronto International Film Festival is back with the landmark 50th edition! This year’s line-up includes 7 Japanese feature films spanning drama, thriller, and animation, along with two short films in the Wavelengths program.
All films are screening in-person at various venues across Toronto, Ontario.
Feature Films:
A Pale View of Hills
遠い山なみの光
Directed by ISHIKAWA Kei
NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE
Japan, United Kingdom, Poland | 2025 | 123m | Japanese, English
Featuring exquisite performances from HIROSE Suzu and YOSHIDA Yoh, this heartbreaking adaptation of ISHIGURO Kazuo’s debut novel alternates between 1950s Japan and 1980s England to survey the shadows of war on the lives of survivors.
©『遠い山なみの光』製作委員会
©2025 A Pale View of Hills Film Partners
Exit 8
８番出口
Directed by KAWAMURA Genki
NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE
Japan | 2025 | 95m | Japanese
KAWAMURA Genki’s Dante-inspired spin on Kotake Create’s cult game traps Arashi star NINOMIYA Kazunari in a looping, sterile subway where one mistake resets everything. A purgatorial thriller born from on-set collaboration, Exit 8 fuses gameplay logic with razor-sharp, emotionally charged cinema.
©2025 映画「8番出口」製作委員会
© 2025 ”Exit 8” Film Partners
JUNK WORLD
Directed by HORI Takahide
INTERNATIONAL PREMIERE
Japan | 2025 | 104m | Japanese
A surprise attack on a joint expedition between humans and their emancipated clones becomes the freaky fulcrum for a dimension-hopping, time-travel fable set over a millennia before HORI Takahide’s original subterranean stop-motion animated opus, Junk Head.
©YAMIKEN
Kokuho
国宝
Directed by LEE Sang-il
NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE
Japan | 2025 | 174m | Japanese
Directed by LEE Sang-il and starring two of Japan’s most prominent actors, YOSHIZAWA Ryo and YOKOHAMA Ryusei, Kokuho is a gripping tale of friendship and rivalry in the world of Kamigata kabuki.
©吉田修一／朝日新聞出版 ©2025 映画「国宝」製作委員会
Renoir
Directed by HAYAKAWA Chie
NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE
Japan, France, Singapore, Philippines, Indonesia, Qatar | 2025 | 118m | Japanese
In Renoir, HAYAKAWA Chie captures the delicate transition from childhood to adolescence through the eyes of Fuki, an 11-year-old girl grappling with her father’s terminal illness, portrayed by incredibly talented newcomer SUZUKI Yui.
© 2025「RENOIR」製作委員会 / International Partners
Rental Family
Directed by HIKARI
WORLD PREMIERE
United States of America, Japan | 2025 | 103m | English, Japanese
Oscar winner Brendan Fraser stars as an American actor in Tokyo who suffers a colossal case of impostor syndrome when he becomes a professional surrogate in this wise and whimsical dramedy from director HIKARI.
©2025 Searchlight Pictures. All Rights Reserved.
Scarlet
果てしなきスカーレット
Directed by HOSODA Mamoru
NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE
Japan | 2025 | 111m | Japanese
The latest from celebrated anime director HOSODA Mamoru, whose Mirai was nominated for an Oscar, evokes Hamlet in this epic, visually stunning tale about the eponymous heroine’s quest to avenge her father’s death.
©2025 スタジオ地図
Short Films:
Ten Mornings Ten Evenings and One Horizon
Directed by NISHIKAWA Tomonari
Japan | 2016 | 10m
In tribute to the recently departed, much-beloved NISHIKAWA Tomonari, his elegant and elegiac Ten Mornings Ten Evenings and One Horizon will be screened.
Screening as part of Wavelengths 1: Map of Traces.
Nishikawa © 2023
Slightest Pretense
わずかな見せかけ
Directed by SAITO Eri
NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE
Japan | 2025 | 15m | No Dialogue
Inspired by a text by legendary Japanese writer AKUTAGAWA Ryūnosuke, and the “scintillating scotoma” that precedes a migraine, SAITO Eri’s Slightest Pretense is a wordless, Super 8 near-narrative that feels like a lost oddity that could have washed up on a shoreline.
Screening as part of Wavelengths 3: Slightest Pretense.
© Eri Saito
