Films by Country

Japan

A celebratory showcase of some of the year’s best and brightest animated shorts. If you’re looking to sample the animation ecosystem in all its multi-coloured, variously-shaped glory, there’s no better place to begin.

Seishin

Soda Kazuhiro

In this genuinely powerful and illuminating documentary, we step inside an outpatient mental health clinic run by a sympathetic elderly doctor to pull back “the invisible curtain” obscuring the world of Japan’s mentally ill.

Tabi no Owari Sekai no Hajimari

Kurosawa Kiyoshi

Personal, cultural and imagined fears are brought to the scenic surface of Kurosawa Kiyoshi’s superb new film, about a young woman navigating the customs and language of a foreign country while on assignment there as the host of a TV show.

La Vérité

Kore-eda Hirokazu

After conquering Cannes with Shoplifters, Japanese auteur Kore-eda Hirokazu breathlessly transposes his beloved cinema of families, food and slow-burning truths to Paris, with an all-star cast led by two doyennes of the French silver screen.

Seishin 0

Soda Kazuhiro

This essential follow-up to Soda Kazuhiro’s taboo-breaking documentary on mental illness in Japanese society revisits the pillar of that film, Dr Yamamoto Masatomo, as he prepares to bid his patients farewell and enter into retirement.