Making Tokyo's traditional downtown area a cheerier place since 2008, 'Shitacome' is one of the very few international film festivals in Japan specialising exclusively in comedy. Taking over the cinemas and streets of Asakusa and Ueno in September, it sees filmmakers, local comedians, residents and tourists get together for a 25-part programme of movies from fresh new fare like Boku no Ojisan (2016), with Nobuhiro Yamashita's latest work getting a pre-release screening, to classic mystery parody Murder by Death (1976). Tickets are available through Pia, while the full programme can be viewed – in Japanese only, as of now – here.
