Japan’s Skip City film festival unveils world premieres for landmark edition

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Confetti

‘Confetti’

Japan’s Skip City International D-Cinema Festival has revealed a raft of world premieres for its 20^th edition, including opening film Confetti and a live-action adaptation of manga A Tail’s Tail.

The festival will open on July 15 with the world premiere of Confetti, which was produced to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Skip City as well as the 90th anniversary of Kawaguchi City, where the event is held. The coming-of-age drama marks the feature debut of director Naoya Fujita, whose film Stay won best Japanese short at the festival in 2020.

The festival will also host the world premiere of A Tail’s Tale, based on Mizu Sahara’s popular comic and directed by Mikiya Sanada, whose Dream of Euglena played in competition at Skip City in 2019. It will play as a special screening.

Held on the outskirts of Tokyo in Kawaguchi City, Saitama Prefecture, Skip City focuses on emerging talent, running international and Japanese film competitions.

The festival will retain the hybrid approach adopted last year in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, running physically from July 15-23 and online from July 22-26.

The 10-strong International Competition includes the world premiere of Japanese psychological thriller My Mother’s Eyes by Takeshi Kushida, who won the Skip City Award in 2020 with Woman Of The Photographs.

Further titles in the section include UK documentary Is There Anybody Out There? by Ella Glendining, which will receive its Asia premiere at the festival following its debut at Sundance earlier this year and Léa Fehner’s French drama Midwives, which won the prize of the Ecumenical jury when it played in Panorama at this year’s Berlinale. (See below for full list of titles)

All six features playing in the Japanese Film Competition are world premieres: Yoshiki Matsumoto’s Alien’s Daydream; Kazuomi Makita‘s Hierophanie; Kazuaki Nagaya’s Mending Cracks; Shinya Nakata‘s Ten Years + One Day; Karin Takeda‘s Till the Day I Can Laugh About My Blues; and Adrien Lacoste‘s Utakata. Eight short films have also been selected.

Masao Teshima, a producer a Japanese production and distribution company Asmik Ace, will preside over the International Competition and Ryota Nakano, a two-time Japan Academy Film Prize nominated director, will oversee the Japanese Film Competition.

The festival will also welcome back five directors – Yusaku Matsumoto, Shingo Matsumura, Mayu Nakamura, Shinzo Katayama, Ryota Nakano – who were previously nominated and awarded at Skip City, screening their recent films and hosting talks with each.

In addition, Jiongjiong Qiu’s first fiction feature A New Old Play, which won the special jury prize at Locarno, will receive its first screening in Japan at the festival.