IFFR 2000

Miike Takashi

Hair-raising psychological thriller filled with scared thighs, addresses of houses that have been boarded up for years, impure whisky, acupuncture needles, piano strings and scary manipulations with time.

no cherry blossoms

Audition

Kurosawa Kiyoshi

Is love possible in a world where we have freed ourselves from our desires? In this ironic investigation into alienation, Haru and Michi dream of escaping from their life in a world in the near future that becomes increasingly surreal as the film progresses.

Barren Illusions

Lee Sang-Il

A spirited and brave fiction début by a young Korean-Japanese film-maker that explores the taboo subject of the relations between Korean immigrants and Japanese in Japan.

Blue Chong

Jun Miyazaki

Experimental film-maker explores the frontiers of a space with the eye of a picture hunter.

Border Land

Ito Takashi

Clever technical abstraction that makes fun of the third dimension.

Donald Richie

Boy with Cat

Police inspector loses his way in a forest, and how. Surreal and mysterious thriller by international breakthrough Kurosawa Kiyoshi (no relation).

Charisma

Cybele

Entertaining action film filled with love and violence by the former avantgarde director Miike. The backdrop for a disastrous clash between a cop and a Yakuza is Miike's favorite spot, the Kabuki-cho area of Shinjuku - Tokyo.

Dead or Alive

Dead Youth

Home video of the film-maker's five-year-old son. But father is a film-maker, so it's not really a home video.

December Hide-and-Seek

A skyscraper races around at breakneck speed.

Devil's Circuit

Konaka Kazuya

Science-fiction film in which secondary-school kids leave with a new classmate for a different dimension - where the world has been destroyed by a nuclear war - to fight the 'enemy'. Can be seen as an answer to La jetée and Fight Club.

The Dimension Travellers

Koji Shirakawa

The film-maker was forced as a child to write with his right hand while he was left-handed. Experimental and painfully honest way to come to terms with a trauma.

Discipline for the Left-Handed

Ota Yo

The music forces the clouds and urban images to flash past.

Distorted Movi Sion

Shiota Akihiko

Little Japanese boys grow up too: Akira and Kouichi are two inseparable ten-year-old boys who get up to all kinds of mischief together. They are at an age when everything still has to be found out... The brutality of life almost imperceptibly penetrates the film.

Don't Look Back

The film-maker makes the interior move the way he wants and takes no notice of the laws of space and logic.

Drill

Five Filosophical Fables

Isaka Satoshi

News reporter Yoko gets a video tape linking a murder and a corruption scandal. This involved a major university and a Ministry. Latest film by the maker of [Focus].

The Frame

Kaneko Shusuke

'Why is Japan always attacked by monsters?' a member of the 'Monster Damage Control Committee' wonders. He doesn't get an answer, but we get spectacular entertainment. Is the flying monster Gamera friendly towards the Japanese or not? And what drives Iris?

Gamera 3: Irisu Kakusei

Tsukamoto Shinya

Tsukamoto Shinya's (Tetsuo, Tokyo Fist) extremely entertaining new film tells a story of class distinction, voluntary and involuntary memory loss, psychological doubling and, of course, murder.

Gemini

Filmic play with floating images of a sleepless film-maker. See also Grim.

Ghost

Performance artist Yasumasa Morimura in drag as Marilyn Monroe.

Gi-souchi M

The primeval magic of film; you can make a ghost really appear. See also Ghost.

Grim

Zeze Takahisa

Boy and girl commit a clumsy raid and torture their victim. Criminal and macabre love story.

Hysteric

Kurokawa Hoshu

An iconoclasm let loose on modern urban impressions. The devastating result is a powerful, experimental and abstract film.

Iconoclasm No. 1

Ingenious experimental mix of cityscapes.

Incorrect Continuity

Shinozaki Makoto

The formidable Kitano Takeshi in the 'making-of' of his last film Kikujiro. Plus an unforgettable encounter with the Taiwanese master Hou Hsiao-hsien.

Jam Session - Kikujiro no natsu koshiki kaizokuban

Kinugasa Teinosuke

In cooperation with the Nederlands Filmmuseum, the festival is presenting a rare print of a Japanese film classic, with the world première of a new commissioned score by Charles Janko for a trio. Rikiya has hallucinations in 18th century Edo (Tokyo) after his missing rival turns up alive. With stye influences of German Expressionism and Kammerspiel.

Jujiro

Kitano Takeshi

Masao (9) has the holiday of his life in a funny, occasionally absurd, but always warm comedy. With and by a Kitano who excels himself.

Kikujiro no natsu

Kim Taegwan

The killer, the call-girl and the victim; each with their own story. Mix of influences from Hong Kong, Korean and Japanese cinema into a fluent, visually virtuoso and humorous variation on a vigorous genre.

Kiss Me So Long I Can't Breathe

The last part of Miike's 'Triad Society' trilogy about the interaction between Chinese and Japanese gangsters. Against the background of pornography, prostitution and perversity, the film tells of three immigrant Japanese who move from the countryside to the big city, where they fall prey to all the usual setbacks.

Ley Lines

Sueoka Ichiro

A cooked film. Old film images regain their taste and colour.

Looking for a Job

Suwa Nobuhiro

Intimate and realistic, the story follows a young woman who is involved in a relationship with a divorced man with a child and unexpectedly has to play a mother role too. A glimpse in the living room of today's Japan.

M/Other

Man with the camera sees his daughter with a baseball bat or is it a legendary monster? As more often with Ito: it's both. See also A Silent Day.

Monochrome Head

Film-maker looks around the house by the light of the moon. The moon makes everything strange. The film-maker makes the strange even stranger.

The Moon

Shibata Go

Experimental audio nightmare. Sound artist Leiichi remixes his childhood memories on hearing the atom bomb fall.

NN 891102

Yaguchi Shinobu

Suzuki Takuji

A one-piece film. The art of self-limitation, in fourteen largely comic scenes, in which the camera is put in one place and offering 75 minutes of great entertainment despite the lack of zooming in or out.

One Piece!

Harada Ippei

Experimental yet fun recut of Hollywood film fragments. New music evolved from the chopped-up sound.

Oz Mix

Miyazaki Hayao

Milestone in Japanese animation film and an incredible box-office hit there. Less polished in style and more complex in content, grander and more mythical than the most ambitious Disney productions, it tells the story of the battle between man and nature in ancient Japan.

Princess Mononoke

Nakata Hideo

Huge hit from Japan, this horror film brought about a big wave of genre films. A videotape that gets passed around from hand to hand is spreading a deadly virus. A television reporter investigates the origin of the tape. But what is on the video itself?

Ring

Nagasaki Shunichi

A mother uses a legend of Shikoku, a place of pilgrimage, to bring back her dead daughter from the underworld. But her beloved child does not come alone... Excellent direction, striking visuals and use of new, very sensitive film stock, assist in creating the involving and emotional tone of socially aware horror film.

Shikoku

Raw experimental film made with a revealing and occasionally painful honesty. The film-maker empathises with the world of thought of his handicapped brother.

The Sight Behind the Bandaged Eye

Portrait of a young woman on the brink of suicide.

A Silent Day

Picture in a picture in a gymnasium; training for the eyes.

Spacy

Jean-Pierre Limosin

Kitano, Japan's greatest living film-maker, talking to Hasumi, the most respected film academic in Japan. The impudent film-maker is actually shy in the presence of the wise professor.

Takeshi Kitano, l'imprévisible

Murakami Kenji

Fake diary-film about blind dating the Japanese way. A man becomes addicted to the excitement of making an appointment with an unknown woman through a Tel-Club, a commercial phone-dating agency.

Tel - Club

Filming film as a game about play or about the girl and the thunder, or both.

Thunder

Oikawa Wataru

Oikawa Ataru

Horror-Manga film version of the début story by the most celebrated writer in the genre. Tomie, the heroine, is a despot who fascinates men with her misleading and crazy attraction.

In 'no cherry blossoms'