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Uchida Eiji, co-director of Netflix’ “The Naked Director” series and 2020 transgender drama movie “Midnight Swan,” tops the new sales slate unveiled by indie rights agency Free Stone Productions in time for the Tokyo festival and market.

Uchida’s “Shrieking in the Rain” is a drama film in which a female first time director has tough choices to make on the set of an erotic movie production she is shooting. The film stars Matsumoto Marika, Oyama Maeko, Motola Serena, and Shibukawa Kiyohiko and is set for a VoD release in Japan from December.

Free Stone is also launching “Life In Bloom,” a drama film directed by Miyake Noboyuki that will release in Japanese theaters in 2022. With a cast headed by Iwamoto Renka, Doi Shiori, Yoshiyuki Kazuko and Takarada Akira, the film tells the story of a student who absconds from school to work in an end of life clinic but eventually...

Japan scored a one-two finish at Italy’s Far East Film Festival, with Uchida Eiji’s transgender drama Midnight Swan winning the coveted Golden Mulberry and Maeda Koji’s comedy You’re Not Normal, Either! taking the Silver Mulberry.

Midnight Swan, also written by Eiji, stars Tsuyoshi Kusanagi as Nagisa, a transgender woman living in Tokyo who unexpectedly takes in her niece Ichika (Misaki Hattori), the two then go on to form a mother-daughter bond.

Koji’s comedy stars Ryo Narita as an unlucky-in-love math teacher who engages his student (Kaya Kiyohara) to teach him how to be normal.

The third prize, the Crystal ...

After the 2020’s online Edition, this yer Udine Far East Film Festival will run a “hybrid” edition from 24th of June to the 2nd of July. Withe a public online press conference the Programme has been unveiled.

Festival’s directress Sabrina Baracetti has opened the press conference with a heartfelt mention to young producer and filmmaker Ma Aeint recently arrested and detained by the military regime in Myanmar. Far East Film Festival wants to add its voice to those of the others protesting and shouting out loudly for Ma Aeint’s freedom.

After a sincere tribute to the sponsors and the local authorities that have helped Feff since its start, Baracetti has revealed the line-up that includes 63 titles from 11 countries, 10 female directors, 6 world premiere, 11 international premiere, 22 European premiere and 21 Italian premieres. Zhang Yimou’s Chinese Spy Thriller “Cliff Walkers” will open the Festival on the 24th of June, while Herman Yau...

In the spirit of “Thelma and Louise,” a lesbian fugitive and the woman she’d kill for hit the road with three stilettos and a blood-red BMW in “Ride or Die.” A glammed up, erotically-charged cocktail of amour fou and true romance directed by Ryuichi Hiroki and written by Nami Kikkawa, the Netflix production gives agency to full-blooded female protagonists. That’s a rarity in Japan’s studio-dominated, cookie-cutter entertainment industry, which explains its liberating, inexhaustible energy.

Based on the adult-skewing manga “Gunjo” (Ultramarine) by Ching Nakamura, the film stars actor-model Kiko Mizuhara (“Norwegian Wood”) and actor-musician Honami Sato. The two celebs’ graphic sex scenes and full-frontal nudity are bound to be a talking point in Japan, where managers usually exert such tight control over their actors’ public image they forbid anything risqué. Given such a system, the audacity and ardor Mizuhara and Sato generated on screen prove their commitment.