Japan Cuts 2024 [Film Festival Preview]

Now 17 years into its storied run as America’s great film festival focusing on Japanese cinema, Japan Cuts hopes to open to an even wider group of people than ever before, and remains one of the great explorations of modern Japanese cinema in all of its forms. Documentaries, shorts, animation and even the occasional epic, this year’s lineup is as intriguing a cross-section of one nation’s cinema as there will be all year. And here are a few highlights to keep an eye on, or check out as the festival runs from July 10-21.

Starting off this peak at Japan Cuts 2024, we dive into the universally fascinating Next Generation lineup, the festival’s competitive sidebar of narrative films from up and coming filmmakers. Entitled Sayonara, Girls director Shun Nakagawa introduces viewers to group of young women as they make their way to graduation at their local high school. There are four main characters of sorts, all dealing with various conflicts, rightly given the same sense of importance. We have a character like Kyoko who is reckoning with the loves she’ll be leaving in the past and Manami who is prepping the school’s big last speech while coming to terms with a past trauma.

Placed as part of the festival’s more experimental-leaning sidebar, the film is contextualized in a fascinating way here. The film’s brilliantly paced here, embracing both the drama of one’s final year of high school as well as a contemplative aesthetic, making the end result quietly profound. Performances here are brilliant, with the four leads being true discoveries. Rina Komiyama, Tomo Nakai, Rina Ono and Yuumi Kawai are all incredible in the film, giving nuanced, distinct performances that feel of a piece when taken as a whole. Photography is also of great importance here, further cementing the film’s naturalistic, intimate vibe that hints at a filmmaker in Shun Nakagawa who is far more mature a storyteller than the “feature debut” may have one believe.

Next up, we jump to the main, Feature Slate, lineup for one of the great films of this year’s festival. From director Kyoshi Sugita comes Following The Sound, which tells the story of Haru, a bookstore clerk who begins encountering two people, Yukiko and Tusyoshi, both of whom begin making a connection (albeit maybe a slightly obtuse one) with our leading lady. The relationship between Haru and Yukiko is particularly fascinating, beginning on the simple request for directions but culminates a literal road trip into the past of Haru’s life as she searches for a tape recording left by her late mother.

Haru’s connection to Tsuyoshi begins a bit more obliquely, as Haru is more or less stalking, but it itself culminates in a muted and largely unspoken reconnection. What is absolutely clear however is that this is a character study truly unlike any this year. The performances here are genuinely brilliant, with An Ogawa, Yuko Nakamura and Hidekazu Mashima giving muted yet boundlessly moving performances as they bob and weave through their relationships without ever truly expressing what’s below the surface. Also written by Sugita, this is a provocative bit of screenwriting, leaving things unknown in a literal sense but instead enveloping the viewer in the repressed unease that is so relatable in modern society.

Finally, we’re staying in the main slate for a film that keeps with the oblique atmosphere albeit in a more genre-leaning framework. A sort of neo-noir mystery written and directed by Drive My Car co-writer Takamasa Oe, Whale Bones is a gorgeously rendered picture, telling the story of Mamiya (Motoki Ochiai), a down on his luck office zombie who, in the hopes of bringing some sort of light into his life, steps into the world of app-based dating. Here he meets a young woman (played brilliantly by popular Japanese singer Ano), who mysteriously disappears before their date could conclude.

From here, Mamiya begins obsessively trying to locate her, following various clues in order to see just what happened to this woman who he only knows as her handle “Aska”. A fascinating rumination on parasocial relationships and the desperation that is found when trying to find a connection in today’s world. The sense of hopelessness found in the character of Mamiya, and made flesh and bone by a brilliant performances from Ochiai, that gives the film a haunting (and in many ways haunted) energy to it. It also makes the catharsis that comes throughout the film all the more compelling. Beautifully written and dripping in the same sort of existential malaise that makes the noir genre truly timeless, Whale Bones is a fascinating, decidedly modern, spin on that genre.