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Cleopatra Entertainment has acquired North American rights to Japanese director Taichiro Natsume’s body horror The Beast Hand ahead of its international premiere at the Sitges Fantastic Film Festival.

The film, which premiered in Japan in early 2024, has also been acquired by Barcelona-based Wild Duck Productions for Spain ahead of its Sitges screening in the Midnight X-Treme next week.

The low-budget picture stars Takahiro Fukuya as petty criminal Osamu who is possessed by a strangely deformed hand which is grafted onto his body by a mysterious doctor after he loses his left arm in a kidnapping job that does not go to plan.

Fukaya is joined in the cast by Yota Kawase as his partner in crime, who is killed in the botched kidnapping, as well as Misa Wada as a woman from Osamu’s past who has undergone extensive plastic surgery to disguise her identity and takes the wounded...

What would happen if the world collapsed? Will society end once and for all? Gen Nagao returns with an astounding thriller on human relations and the nature of violence and order. “Motion Picture: Choke”, also known as “Movie (Choke)”, is his second feature and an unexpected take that cleans the slate of everything we understand of the world and humankind.

Motion Picture: Choke is screening at Udine Far East Film Festival 2024

In contrast to fellow post-apocalyptic movies, Nagao's dystopian society doesn't revolve around avant-garde and hyper-technological structures. Instead, after its collapse, the world starts from scratch. It lacks civilization and human speech. The people converse via grunts and sighs. The protagonist is a woman (Misa Wada) who survives alone by hunting and spending time in nature. She is observed intimately as she awakens transfixed following frequent nightmares of an all-black, menacing human figure threatening her. But her only human connection...

The 20th edition of Skip City International D-Cinema Festival had been physically held from July 15 to July 23 (and virtually from July 22 to July 26), and wrapped at the Closing Ceremony, Sunday July 23. Jury and Audience award winners were announced at the Ceremony.

For the International Compeition, an Asian Premiere film, When the Seedlings Grow (Syria), directed by Rêger Azad Kaya, received the Grand Prize. I Woke Up with a Dream (Argentina, Uruguay), directed by Pablo Solarz, won the Best Director and Six Weeks (Hungary), directed by Noémi Veronika Szakonyi received the Special Jury Prize. This year's jury members were Masao Teshima, President of the Jury and a renowned producer from Asmik Ace, Naomi Akashi, the producer of Egoist (Dir. Daishi Matsunaga) and Patrice Nezan, a French producer, who produced the festival's 2019 winner The Tower (Dir. Mats Grorud). In addition, Midwives (France), directed by Léa Fehner, was chosen for the Audience Award.

There will be a slight confusion about the film’s title unless you are fluent in Japanese, especially after being introduced to Yamasaki’s two main protagonists who do not carry the same portion of the narrative. One of them, Chang-su (Kang Yoon-soo) is a former Olympic jockey for the South Korea national team who quit his dream of a professional athlete career after his father’s bankruptcy. What brought him to Maniwa of all places is a question, but it is there he’d settled down with his Japanese partner (Misa Wada) and her daughter Uzuki. It is also where he works in a local quarry. Chang-su is an immigrant worker without proper payment or medical insurance, and when things are just about to change for the better, an accident provoked by someone’s neglect will reset his life back to beginner’s agony. There is also the titular...

“Idol is Dead” is a tongue-in-cheek horror movie, written and directed by virtually unknown Yukihiro Kato and starring the unconventional Idol group BiS, founded in 2010 by former solo artist Pour Lui. The film was released in 2012 on the occasion of their second album – also called Idol is Dead – and major record label deal with Avex Trax and was conceived originally to be included – with the CD – in a special edition. Later, in 2014 will be followed by “Idol Is Dead: Non-chan’s Propaganda Major War” another similar, film + CD operation.

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Riu (Pour Lui) works reluctantly in the provincial hostess bar Takasaki, whose motto is “Even behind the eyes we are smiling”. Dolled up and grumpy, she ponders about her failure to become an Idol and her not so good plan B as a singing hostess. One night, on the way back home with her drunk colleague Tsunko (Misa Wada...

Shinzo Katayama has worked as assistant to Bong Joon-ho and Nobuhiro Yamashita but this is actually his debut in the director’s seat. His effort, of depicting a lowlife man who is trying to take care of his mentally disabled sister was a difficult theme to begin with, but Katayama really took it a step further, in the process creating a movie that hits like a punch with its almost grotesque realism. Let us take things from the beginning, though.

Yoshio lives with his sister Mariko, who is mentally disabled. He works at the docks, but the money he gets are not enough, and the siblings inhabit a completely run-down house, barely sustaining themselves. Mariko goes wondering off frequently, and Yoshio has made a routine of searching for her. In one of her wanderings, she is “delivered” by a fisherman, but when Yoshio finds money in her trousers and semen in her underwear,...

The Japanese Feature Film Competition will screen four titles from young Japanese filmmakers.

Japan’s Skip City International D-Cinema Festival has unveiled the line-up for its 15th anniversary edition (July 13-22), including a new competition section for Japanese features.

The Japanese Feature Film Competition will screen four titles from young Japanese filmmakers, including two world premieres – Kenichiro Hiro’s coming-of-age drama Beyond The Blue and Shinzo Katayama’s Siblings Of The Cave, starring Yuya Matsuura and Misa Wada.

The remaining two films in this section are Hiroyuki Takebayashi’s High Sentiments Family and Norichika Oba’s Cyclops. In previous editions of the festival,...