Following last year's embrace of anime and "content," 2015 sees the Tokyo International Film Festival reassert its credentials as an event, first and foremost, for cineastes. One particularly welcome addition is the new Japan Now section, a roundup of recent and upcoming movies from the likes of Hirokazu Koreeda, Shinya Tsukamoto and Yoji Yamada.
This year, the section also casts a spotlight on an underrated talent. Director Masato Harada is getting a mini-retrospective, featuring his recent "Kakekomi" and "The Emperor in August" alongside three older works. As the 66-year-old joked during a press conference at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan, its "five films — all of them rejected by Cannes Film Festival."
Despite boasting a rich filmography and speaking fluent English, Harada has never achieved the international renown enjoyed by peers like Koreeda and Tsukamoto. That's partly due to the diversity of his oeuvre, which ranges from social criticism ("Bounce Ko Gals") to historical dramas ("The Choice of Hercules") to horror ("Densen Uta").