Tokyo Film Festival Sets Wim Wenders Pic ‘Perfect Days’ As Opening Film, ‘Godzilla Minus One’ To Close

A first-time filmmaker has claimed the top prize at the 19th Annual Camden Film Festival in Maine, one of the country’s foremost all-documentary festivals.

Clayton Davis Senior Awards Editor Variety Awards Circuit section is the home for all awards news and related content throughout the year, featuring the following: the official predictions for the upcoming Oscars, Emmys, Grammys and Tony Awards ceremonies, curated by Variety senior awards editor Clayton Davis. The prediction pages reflect the current standings in the race and do not reflect personal preferences for any individual contender. As other formal (and informal) polls suggest, competitions are fluid and subject to change based on buzz and events.

Organizers of the Camden International Film Festival in coastal Maine are moving ahead with regular programming today, as Hurricane Lee – downgraded to a post-tropical cyclone – aims further north towards Nova Scotia.

Naman Ramachandran Jessica Chastain will receive the Zurich Film Festival’s Golden Icon Award. Chastain will present her latest film “Memory” at the festival alongside director Michel Franco and co-star Peter Sarsgaard on Oct. 1.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Yakusho Koji, the Japanese star who was named best actor at Cannes this year in Wim Wenders’ “Perfect Days,” is set as the subject of a seven-title showcase at the upcoming Golden Horse Film Festival in Taiwan. Among the septet are classic erotic film “Lost Paradise” from 1997, this year’s “Perfect Days” and 1996 film “Shall We Dance,” which was later remade in Hollywood. A former civil servant who first ventured into Taiga drama (long-running TV series broadcast by NHK), then played in several films by Kurosawa Akira, Yakusho became a major 1990s star in Asia as a result of “Shall We Dance?,” in which he portrayed a ball room dancer, and “Lost Paradise.” He also starred in Itami Juzo’s “Tampopo.” Directed by Morita Yoshimitsu, “Lost Paradise” is a tale of a man and a woman whose marriages no longer make them happy, but who rediscover desire in each other’s arms. Fatefully, however, their newfound joy means ever greater transgression of Japan’s strict morality laws. At the time of the release of “Lost Paradise,” the producers deliberately darkened the erotic scenes to make them less explicit and to achieve less restrictive release classifications.

In postwar Japan, a new terror rises Godzilla. Will the devastated people be able to survive… let alone fight back? So yeah, it’s a reboot of sorts.

Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore‘s new movie May December is set to introduce the 2023 New York Film Festival later this month!

Busan International Film Festival (BIFF, October 4-13) has unveiled its full line-up, including opening and closing films, and announced that Hong Kong star Chow Yun-fat has been named as Asian Filmmaker of the Year. 

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The Busan International Film Festival put aside many of its recent internal and local political problems to Tuesday unveil a large selection ranging from bleeding edge art titles to international festival favorites. “The difficult times are not behind us, but hard work has made this year’s festival better than ever,” said programmer and interim festival chief Nam Dong-chul, speaking at an online press conference. International guests expected to attend the festival include Luc Besson, Chinese superstar Fan Bingbing, Japanese directors Hamaguchi Ryusuke and Kore-Eda Hirokazu, Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf, and Korean Americans Justin Chon (“Gook”) and Lee Isaac Chung (“Minari”). Hong Kong-based superstar Chow Yun-fat has been named as Busan’s Asian Filmmaker of the Year and will be in person to receive the award.

Shinrin-yoku, which translates as “forest-bathing,” was a Japanese invention of the 1980s: a meditative therapy that connects burnt-out urbanites with the healing power of nature. Evil Does Not Exist, the latest film from the celebrated director of Drive My Car, Ryusuke Hamaguchi – and a contender for the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival — opens with a long series of scenes of trees that are so serenely paced and beautifully scored that they leave you feeling as if you have been forest-bathing for real. 

Japan has selected Perfect Days, the Tokyo-based fiction feature from German filmmaker Wim Wenders, as its entry for the Best International Feature Film category at the 2024 Oscars.

In principle, using the rainy-day, kitchen-sink post-rock of Manchester band The Smiths so prominently in a film like The Killer seems incredibly perverse, given that it’s an exotic, globe-trotting thriller about an American assassin. But in reality, it’s actually very sound choice indeed: legend has it that the band’s singer, Morrissey, had two reasons for naming his band so, the first being that “Smith” is one of the most common and thus unremarkable surnames in the world. The second, and much more subversive theory, suggests that it’s also a reference to David and Maureen Smith, brother-in-law and sister of ’60s serial killer Myra Hindley, the snappily dressed couple whose testimony blew open the Moors Murderers case and whose beatnik likenesses adorn the cover of Sonic Youth’s 1990 album “Goo”.

Five years after his triumphant A Star is Born world premiered at the Venice Film Festival, Bradley Cooper is back on the Lido with Maestro. Except, the director and star is only here in spirit owing to the SAG-AFTRA strike.

Back in 2009, Yorgos Lanthimos led the so-called Greek Weird Wave with the Oscar-nominated Dogtooth, an unsettling exploration of a family of teenagers kept from the world by their father in a gated estate that they could never leave. The family is rich, so they can have anything they want except the wide world and their freedom; even sex can be bought in. 

While documentaries come in all shapes and sizes, rarely are they made in the hopes of being visually astounding. In fact, with many documentaries, it’s the subject matter that is pushed to the forefront and the filmmaking is almost secondary.

The Telluride Film Festival, a key part of the fall festival circuit launching awards season and perhaps some major Academy Award contenders, announced the wide-ranging lineup of films for its landmark 50th edition. The fest kicks off Thursday and runs through Labor Day and will feature world premieres of Oscar winners Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers (Focus Features), Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn (Amazon) and Free Solo filmmakers Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin’s narrative feature Nyad (Netflix).

Clayton Davis Senior Awards Editor The 50th Telluride Film Festival official lineup has been announced, revealing multiple world premieres including Emerald Fennell’s “Saltburn,” George C. Wolfe’s “Rustin,” Jeff Nichols’ “The Bikeriders” and Alexander Payne’s “The Holdovers.” In addition, the festival will pay tribute to Oscar-nominated director Yorgos Lanthimos, whose film “Poor Things” will debut Stateside after premiering at the Venice Film Festival.

EXCLUSIVE: The Love and Hope International Film Festival, based in Barcelona and backed by IMDB, Stage 32, FilmFreeway, and Final Draft, will open its upcoming edition with Guillotine by Iranian-American director Ray Izad-Mehr.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival has announced dual opening night titles, both inspired by faith and local memories, as well as its closing gala presentation. The festival will open with “Snow in Midsummer,” directed by Chong Keat-aun, a former winner of the Golden Horse Film Awards’ best new director prize with “The Story of Southern Islet,” and “Be With Me,” by Hwarng Wern-ying, who previously won Golden Horse prizes for art direction, costume and makeup. The festival, which runs Nov.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Wim Wenders’ acclaimed “Perfect Days” will open the Tokyo International Film Festival in October. The event will close with “Godzilla Minus One,” the latest addition to Toho’s iconic monster movie franchise on Nov. 1. “Perfect Days” follows the routine and revelatory chance encounters of a simple toilet cleaner in Tokyo.