The first highlights of the 23rd Nippon Connection Film Festival are set! From June 6 to 11, 2023, Frankfurt am Main in Germany will once again become the capital of Japanese cinema. For six days, you can immerse yourself in art and cinema from Japan at eight venues. There are around 100 exciting short and feature-length films to discover – from the latest blockbusters and anime to independent and documentary films. A varied supporting program with more than 50 workshops, concerts, lectures and exhibitions as well as a wide range of culinary specialties invite you to experience Japan with all your senses. The two festival centers with cinemas, bars and Japanese market stalls are again the Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm and the Produktionshaus NAXOS in Frankfurt am Main. The complete program and tickets will be available on NipponConnection.com starting May 12, 2023.
Nippon Rising Star Award Goes To Toko Miura!
The star guest of this year's festival is Toko Miura, best known from the Oscar-winning drama Drive My Car (2021) by Ryusuke Hamaguchi. The actress and singer will receive the Nippon Rising Star Award on June 11, 2023. The new honorary award will be presented at the festival for the first time this year and celebrates outstanding young talents in Japanese cinema. In addition to Drive My Car, Toko Miura can be seen in the anti-love film I Am What I Am (2022, German premiere) by Shinya Tamada and the high school road movie Our Huff And Puff Journey (2015) by Daigo Matsui.
True love, wild action and provocative dystopias
Nippon Connection celebrates great cinema across all genres with many premieres and guests. In Daishi Matsunaga's multi-award-winning queer love drama Egoist (2022), fashion editor Kosuke falls in love with his young fitness trainer Ryuta. This bittersweet love story, bursting with life, will be presented at Nippon Connection as a German premiere with the director in attendance. Plan 75 (2022) by Chie Hayakawa has also enjoyed international success and will be shown as a German premiere at Nippon Connection. The multi-layered debut film, sketching a provocative dystopian future of Japan's hyperaging society, was shown at the Cannes Film Festival and was Japan's entry for the Academy Award. Santa Yamagishi's fast-paced relationship comedy To The Supreme! (2022) scrutinizes romantic clichés and uncovers the truths behind them. Things get more fairytale-like in the animated film Gold Kingdom And Water Kingdom (2023). With her feature film debut, anime director Kotono Watanabe has succeeded in creating an imaginative take on the story of Romeo and Juliet that delights with its unconventional characters and a fine sense of humor. For fans of Japanese genre cinema, two very special gems will be shown in Germany for the first time: In Baby Assassins (2021) and its sequel Baby Assassins 2 Babies (2023), the two teenagers Chisato and Mahiro have an unusual side job as tough assassins. Director Hugo Sakamoto's wild genre mix skillfully switches from the lightness of a slacker comedy to perfectly choreographed action.
Cityscapes And Countryside – Contrasting Lives In Japan
Japan is seen as a country of contradictions, with futuristic megacities next to rural regions where time seems to have stopped. This year's thematic focus Cityscapes And Countryside, supported by the Kulturfonds Frankfurt RheinMain, is dedicated to this contrast. The philosophical drama The Zen Diary (2022, German premiere) by Yuji Nakae shows the life of a writer in the mountains of Japan – with an astute eye for nature and the flowing of the seasons. A somewhat different period film can be discovered with Okiku And The World (2022, German premiere) by Junji Sakamoto. Set in 1858, it tells the story of two young men who sell excrements from the capital's toilets as fertilizer in the countryside and meet the beautiful city girl Okiku. Filmmaker Taku Aoyagi worked as a delivery courier in Tokyo during the pandemic and captured the experience in his documentary Tokyo Uber Blues (2022, international premiere). The documentary Umui – Guardians Of Traditions (2022, international premiere) takes us to Japan's southernmost archipelago of Okinawa and shows people who want to preserve the local traditions of dance and music.
Concerts, workshops, lectures & children's program
The varied supporting program Nippon Culture offers six festival days full of concerts, workshops, lectures and more on Japanese culture. Musical acts expected to perform include the legendary Japanese girl rock trio TsuShiMaMiRe (June 9), Japanese singer, yodeler and TV star Takeo Ischi (June 10), the shamisen band Mitsune (June 8) from Berlin, and the famous koto player Yoshiaki Okawa (June 10). In workshops, visitors can make their own wood prints, draw mangas, cook Japanese food or experience a traditional tea ceremony. Moreover, there will be numerous lectures, open-air concerts and an exhibition of photographs by Jumpei Tainaka with no admission charge. In the two festival centers, Mousonturm and NAXOS, more than 30 booths will offer Japanese food and drinks, handicrafts, books, films and much more. Access to the festival site is free of charge.
Nippon Kids offers an exciting program for young fans of Japan. In various workshops, children will learn to prepare Japanese sweets, write Japanese characters or do wood-printing. A special highlight is a reading from the children's book Das Tomatenfest in the presence of the author Satomi Ichikawa and with interpretation into German sign language. In addition, the animated film Sumikkogurashi: The Little Wizard In The Blue Moonlight (2021) by Takahiro Omori and the cult anime series Future Boy Conan (1978) by Hayao Miyazaki will be shown.
Tickets & Locations
Besides the festival centers Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm and Produktionshaus NAXOS, further venues will include the Eldorado Arthouse Kino, the Cinema at the DFF – Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum, the Mal Seh'n Kino and the Internationales Theater Frankfurt.
