It’s not always easy to find non-mainstream movies to stream, especially free ones, but happily the Japanese Film Festival Online website has a free film streaming service called JFF Online running for two weeks in February.
It’s part of a global initiative that has recent, cutting-edge films available in 25 countries at the same time, including thrillers, dramas, comedies and documentaries.
Time Out is a little bit obsessed with tonkotsu, so we’ll be streaming The God of Ramen, a doco about the founder of a famous Tokyo ramen shop who had a big influence on the ramen industry. There’s also a documentary about the intriguing sport of sumo wrestling titled Sumodo: The Successors of Samurai.
The question of whether robots have souls has been a Japanese trope since the dawn of Astroboy, and a new anime called Time of EVE The Movie explores the theme in an innovative style. A young man in the future discovers a café where androids are treated the same as humans and is forced to reassess his relationship with his household servant. Traditional women's roles in Japanese society loom as the not-very-hidden subtext to this one.
It’s also a theme of Aristocrats, a drama that tackles class in Japan in the story of an upper-class woman who meets the former partner of her future husband, who has a hardscrabble rural background.
We’re excited to see It’s a Summer Film!, a coming-of-age drama in which a teenage girl who loves old samurai films decides to make her own swords-and-kimonos epic. The movie resonates with passion for movies and stars Marika Ito, a singer popular from Japanese Idol. If you’re craving an actual samurai movie then try blockbuster The Floating Castle, about the eccentric young lord of a small castle who decides to pit his 500 men against an army of 20,000.
Japanese cinema is big news in 2022 with Drive My Car a hot favourite to win Oscars, and JFF Online is a great opportunity to get up to speed with some of the best new films from the land of the rising sun. All movies in JFF Online include English subtitles.
