Japan’s Skip City International D-Cinema Festival has announced the lineup for its 8th edition, which runs October 8-16 in Kawaguchi, Saitama prefecture.

The 12-film competition lineup includes nine world titles and three Japanese titles. The world entries are Gavin Lin’s Revenge Of The Factory Woman; Carlos César Arbeláez’ The Colors Of The Mountain; Selim Demirdelen’s The Crossing; Andreas Öhman’s Simple Simon; Abner Benaim’s Chance; Alrick Brown’s Kinyarwanda; Vanja d’Alcantara’s Beyond The Steppes; Eli Craig’s Tucker & Dale Vs Evil and Bill Chiu’s 26 Happiness Road.

In the Japanese section, also eligible for main competition prizes, are three world premieres: Satoshi Kase’s Spinning Kite; Shingo Takeda’s Children and Kenji Kohashi’s Don’t Stop!

The competition jury is led by producer Satoru Ogura (Venice out of competition entry Tormented). He is joined by Asmik Ace producer Shinji Ogawa (Norwegian Wood), Blindness producer Sonoko Sakai and US-based producer Lars Knudsen (Beginners, Shit Year).

Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Cannes grand prix winner Once Upon A Time In Anatolia opens the festival. Ceylan’s Climates won the top prize at Skip City in 2007, with the prize money reportedly funding follow-up Three Monkeys, which won best director in Cannes.

Other programs include the domestic short film competition and a three-film selection of award-winning titles from major international festivals. A gala premiere of 2012 Shochiku musical drama Quartet and live entertainment ODS programming also feature.

Skip City shifted to October from its usual mid-July time slot in light of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster that struck Japan in March. Now overlapping with the Busan international film festival (Oct 6-14) and directly preceding the Tokyo international film festival (Oct 22-30), the festival is likely to move back to its regular period in 2012.

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