The Japan Foundation's flagship cinematic countrywide event, their Touring Film Programme has been announced for 2026. Covering 26 films and touching 34 cinemas, hopefully one near you, this year has as it's theme: ‘Knowing Me, Knowing You: The True Self in Japanese Cinema’.
Starting to riffle through the press release, there's some excellent films upcoming. To pick out a few so far:
Taking centre stage is Takashi Miike's Sham, transforming investigative journalist Masumi Fukuda’s groundbreaking report Fabrication: The Truth Behind the Fukuoka 'Murderous Teacher' Case into a powerful contemporary work. The film tells the story of an elementary school teacher who is forced to publicly apologise after being accused of brutally disciplining a child by the boy’s mother. Depicting the media storm and lawsuit that follows, Miike offers up a gripping social critique as well as moral inquiry, challenging us to question what is real, whom to trust, and how fragile the images we create of others truly are.
One Cut of the Dead director Shinichiro Ueda returns with ANGRY SQUAD: The Civil Servant and the Seven Swindlers, an action-packed, big screen comic heist, in which a straight-laced tax office employee teams up with a genius con artist to form the ‘Angry Squad’ and take down a crooked real estate tycoon.
The classic restoration is represented by Kon Ichikawa's Conflagration. Inspired by true events, later incorporated into Yukio Mishima’s classic novel The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, this haunting psychological drama examines the fragile boundary between reverence and fanaticism, revealing the turbulent inner conflicts at the heart of the human condition. A key work of director Kon Ichikawa, the film follows a tortured monk consumed by the divine beauty of Shukaku Temple. His disillusionment with a world tainted by vanity, lust and hypocrisy will lead him into a psychological descent and a destructive decision from which there is no return. Presented here in a stunning 4K digital remastered version.
The sole anime entry is Baku Kinoshita's The Last Blossom. Elderly Minoru is serving a life sentence, awaiting a lonely death in his prison cell. The only real sign of life in the cell is a potted hosenka (balsam plant). One night, he begins sharing his life story with the plant and, improbably, it starts talking back. Through their conversations, he recalls his past and reflects on the meaning of his life in director Kinoshita’s thoughtful and tender anime, which explores love and life’s changes.
Ghost Killer - a thrilling and kinetic action film comes courtesy of director Kensuke Sonomura and writer Yugo Sakamoto, the team behind recent hit film series Baby Assassins. Delivering sharp humour and high-octane martial arts, this is a heartfelt story of redemption and unlikely partnership between a university student and the ghost of a murdered hitman. The film has played at the world’s leading genre film festivals including Beyond Fest, Fantastic Fest, Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival and Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival.
The full listing of films and cinemas can be found on JFTFP's website. We'll aim to cover those films that we can.
