Nara International Film Festival, the biennial event founded by acclaimed Japanese filmmaker Naomi Kawase, has revealed the international competition line-up for its 2024 edition.
Titles include Satu - Year of the Rabbit by UK filmmaker Joshua Trigg, which premiered at Raindance in June; Chinese director Choy Ji’s feature debut Borrowed Time, first seen at last year’s Busan; and The Hypnosis by Sweden’s Ernst De Geer, which picked up three prizes at Karlovy Vary in 2023.
Further features are Malika Musaeva’s The Cage Is Looking For A Bird, Laura Ferres’ The Permanent Picture and Heartless by Nara Normande and Tiao, which premiered at Berlin, Locarno and Venice respectively.
The festival is set to run from September 20-23 in the historical Japanese city of Nara, which the directors of the competition films are expected to visit to present their titles. They will vie for the Golden Shika Award (named after Nara’s famous deer), an audience award and a best actor award.
In addition, organisers have unveiled the titles for its NARA-wave section, which comprises films by university students from around the world. (Full list below)
NIFF is also known for its NARAtive initiative, in which competitions winners are invited back to Nara to shoot a film produced by Kawase. The most recently completed NARAtive film is 2023’s Beyond the Fog, directed by Japan’s Daichi Murase, whose Roll won the NARA-wave audience award in 2020. Beyond the Fog closed last year’s San Sebastian and was released in Japanese cinemas in April.
NIFF was founded by Kawase, who has played in Competition at Cannes five times with Shara, The Mourning Forest, Hanezu, Still The Water and Radiance. The filmmaker, who hails from Nara Prefecture and serves as the festival’s executive producer, also directed 2015 film Sweet Bean, which will close this year’s NIFF.
NARA-wave 2024
Cataract (Pol)
Dir. Łukasz Iwanicz (Warsaw Film School)
Signs (Japan)
Dir. Miharu Mori (Tokyo University of the Arts)
Whispering In The Leaves (Can)
Dir. Luvleen Hunjan (Toronto Metropolitan University)
Kiss (Japan)
Dir. Chen Shuxin (Toho Gakuen Film Techniques Training College)
Kisai (Japan)
Dir. Kou Sakakibara (Waseda University)
Flowers In A Hailstorm (India)
Dir. Maharshi Tuhin Kashyap (Satyajit Ray Film And Television Institute, Kolkata)
Only The Forgotten Is New (Ger)
Dir. Mona Schier (Breda University of Applied Sciences)
Fallen Leaves Drifting Down (Japan)
Dir. Zeyu Zhao (Tokyo Visual Arts)
Poet (UK-China)
Dir. Kun Sun (London Film School)
Sense Of Seperation (Japan)
Dir. He Yingjie (Musashino Art University)
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