Japanese Film Festival Delivers The Best Of Japanese Cinema In 29th Year
Image: Supplied
Returning for its 29th year, the Japanese Film Festival has this week revealed their 2025 program line up, highlighting the best of contemporary and classic Japanese cinema.
Touring Australia with events held across Canberra, Melbourne, Brisbane, Sydney and Perth, the festival has something for everyone, offering new releases, literary adaptations, thrillers and anime features, and more.
“We’re excited to bring a program that speaks to the breadth of Japanese cinema today,” said Festival Programmer, Manisay Oudomvilay.
“From historical sagas to intimate family portraits, contemporary thrillers to beloved manga brought to life, these films capture both the richness of tradition and the restless innovation of Japanese filmmakers.”
Opening the festival is Lee Sang-il’s (Villain, Rage) Kokuhо̄, which follows two boys who grow up inside the kabuki theatre tradition of western Japan through five decades of friendship and rivalry.
The film broke all-time box office records for a live action film at home, and is Japan’s official submission for the 2026 Academy Awards.
Featuring two of Japan’s biggest stars, Ryо̄ Yoshizawa and Ryūsei Yokohama, alongside veteran actor, Ken Watanabe of Memoirs of a Geisha fame, Kokuhо̄ traces the boys’ journey from adolescence in the 1960s through lives defined by loyalty, ambition and the pursuit of mastery in a highly competitive artform.
From the page to the screen
Several films in the program are drawn from acclaimed literature and popular culture, including 6 Lying University Students, adapted from Asakura Akinari’s 2021 bestseller, which sees a corporate recruitment test transform into a psychological thriller. It’s joined by Petals and Memories, based on Minato Shukawa’s Naoki Prize-winning short story collection Hana Manma, centring on a brother and sister navigating family obligations and hidden truths, as well as 366 Days, which is inspired by the hit song of the same name by Okinawan band, HY.
The enduring influence of manga and anime on Japanese cinema will also be highlighted at this year’s celebrations, with Cells at Work! turning the hit manga franchise to live action, featuring anthropomorphised cells of a human body as they battle illness and injury.
Tsuchika Nishimura’s The Concierge at Hokkyoku Department Store has also made its way to the silver screen, with an animated adaptation focusing on a trainee concierge in a surreal department store setting where all the customers are animals.
The full program and tickets are available now.
2025 Japanese Film Festival screening dates and venues:
CANBERRA: 27 October – 18 November
Palace Electric, National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA)
MELBOURNE: 6 November – 4 December
The Kino, ACMI
BRISBANE: 6 November – 19 December
Palace Barracks, Queensland Art Gallery & Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA)
SYDNEY: 12 November – 1 December
Palace Norton Street, Palace Moore Park, Palace Central, Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW)
PERTH: 18 – 26 November
Palace Raine Square
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