Japan Cuts 2023 [Film Festival Preview]

Now nearly a decade-and-a-half 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 26-August 6.

Starting off this preview of Japan Cuts 2023, we look at the centerpiece picture, Under the Turquoise Sky. From filmmaker KENTARO, Turquoise Sky introduces viewers to Takeshi (Yuya Yagira), a man sent into the Mongolian countryside by his grandfather (Akaji Maro). The film is a rather ambitious project in production scope, with teams from Japan, Mongolia, France, Australia and Chile all working on this global co-production, and luckily all that money and ambition is more than present on the screen. At its core a road picture, KENTARO’s film takes viewers across gorgeous and lavishly-shot vistas, crafting a sort of character study that is strangely Western in its execution.

Winner of the FIPRESCI Interntional Film Critics Award, Turquoise Sky is inarguably one of the festival’s more accomplished films. The cinematography here is top-notch, and the performances are equally as evocative. Yagira is a revelation here, and his beautifully nuanced turn pairs brilliantly with a script that’s layered in surprising ways. Cementing KENTARO as a voice to pay keen attention to on the World Cinema stage, this startlingly moving drama is one of the great surprises yet this year.

One of the great parts of the Japan Cuts series is the “Next Generation” competition slate. Each year, the festival fills this sidebar with the latest and greatest of Japanese cinema, with a focus on independent and up-and-coming filmmakers. And one of the standouts from this year’s impressive sidebar is Sanka. Set in 1960s Japan, the film follows Norio, a young man who has come from Tokyo to live in his grandmother’s village and grows close to a group of “Sanka” (a nomadic collection of people living in mountain foothills).

Inarguably one of the festival’s prettiest films, director Ryohei Sasatani crafts a beautifully felt film, a film at once about a young man’s coming of age against the backdrop of a post war Japan but also about the generational battle between tradition and modernity. Very much in conversation with classic Japanese cinema, the film is also of note in its portrayal of a rarely discussed part of Japanese history. Sasatani brings to light the story of the Sanka, a group of people making their way by making and repairing tools used out in the fields. Ostensibly drifters, these people seemingly blinked out of existence following the 1960s, largely due to their role in the world more or less blinking out of existence with them. It’s in this fight between “the old ways” and oncoming modernity that the real power of the film comes. Driven by great performances and a director who is absolutely one to watch, Sanka stands as one of the festival’s more engrossing films.

And rounding out this preview is maybe the best film I watched from this year’s lineup. Going into the world of anime, the crown jewel of Japan Cuts 2023 in this writer’s opinion is the utterly incredible The First Slam Dunk. Based on the 1990’s manga Slam Dunk, this film marks the debut of original mangaka Takehiko Inoue in the director’s chair and the return of the series to the big screen for the first time in 30+ years.

The film follows Ryota Miyagi, the star point guard for Shohoku High School’s basketball team, and is ostensibly set during the national championship game. I say ostensibly as the film uses this final game as a sort of introduction to the team, with flashbacks filling in key moments in these young men’s lives and what has gotten them all, especially Ryota, to this moment in time. Stunningly animate, this two-hour sports epic of sorts is a gorgeously rendered character study, a portrait of life as a young man as seen through a collection of characters that, despite the brief time together, feel more flesh and blood to the audience than most live-action casts. The action here is intense and character-driven, ultimately turning The First Slam Dunk into not just the great film of Japan Cuts 2023 but one of the great sports films of all time.