Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Full line-up for Nippon Connection 2009 announced

by Chris MaGee

Things have been very busy lately. Barring my day job I've been working on a couple articles for other websites and planning an upcoming Pow-Wow event in Toronto, so with all that going on I haven't had much time to get excited about this year's Nippon Connection festival taking place next month in Frankfurt. Well, that is until yesterday when I saw that the Nippon Connection had updated their official site with the final full line-up for this, the 9th edition of the largest film festival dedicated solely to Japanese cinema outside of Japan.

The full list is far too long to post in its entirety, but here are some highlights of the films that we've not reported on thus far (You can check out our previous reports here and here): Fujiro Mitsuishi's manga adaptation "Osaka Hamlet" starring Ittoku Kishibe and Keiko Matsusaka, Yoshihiro Nakamura's gentle father/ son comedy "Two in Track Suits", Masahide Ichii's "Naked of Defenses" which took home top prize at last year's Ousan International Film Festival, Ikki Katashima's serial killer comedy "Serial Dad" starring Arata Furuta and Chiaki Kuriyama, and Yuki Tanada's teen manga adaptation "Ain't No Tomorrows". All those on top of "Tokyo Sonata", "Genius Party", "Detroit Metal City", All Around Us", "20th Century Boys", "Still Walking" and "Love Exposure" and that's not even mentioning the short film programs and special events! That's it! I'm starting to pack now. Check out the full line-up of the 9th Annual Nippon Connection Film Festival here while I pull my suitcase out of the closet and dig out my passport.

1 comment:

Cathy Munroe Hotes said...

It's a great line-up... though I'm a bit disappointed they weren't able to get Okuribito. I heard that after it won the Oscar it was hard to get ahold of screening copies. Look forward to seeing you at the festival! We're going to Prague for Easter but I plan to be back in time for the opening night.