Family Dramas Dominate Tokyo Festival’s Asian Lineup Amid ‘Geopolitical Volatility’

Family relationships run through the Asian films that Tokyo International Film Festival programmer Ishizaka Kenji has picked for this year’s edition.

“While it is hard to pinpoint an exact catalyst for this surge in family-driven drama, what is undeniable is that amidst today’s geopolitical volatility, these filmmakers share an instinctive urge to reexamine the smallest foundational unit around them: the family and sibling bonds,” Ishizaka tells Variety.

Ishizaka has programmed Asian cinema at the festival since 2007, when most submissions were still shot on film. Digital took over within a few years. His selection process moved from 35mm prints and VHS tapes to DVDs, and later to streaming links and downloadable screeners.

‘The physical medium gave way to data; cinema lost its tangible ‘weight,” he says.

The shift also changed what films looked like. Freed from the need to reload film, Asian directors leaned into long running times built on unbroken takes, and so-called slow cinema spread across the region. Two of its leading auteurs took top prizes at major European festivals in the 2010s: Thailand’s Apichatpong Weerasethakul won the Palme d’Or at Cannes for “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives,” and the Philippines’ Lav Diaz won Venice’s Golden Lion for “The Woman Who Left.”

Ishizaka also oversees Asian Future, the festival’s competition for young Asian filmmakers. Its 10 titles this year include Katski Flores’ “Edjop” from the Philippines, Kim Hyun-min’s “On the Heights” from South Korea and Chezhiyan’s “The Paper Flower” from India. Azamat Shargyn’s “Shyrmauyq” from Kazakhstan, Ariani Darmawan’s “Jani Be Good” from Indonesia and Kujiraoka Hironori’s “Saravah” from Japan are also in the running.

The line between studio fare and independent film has blurred considerably, he says.

“In the Philippines, for instance – a national cinema often described as enjoying its ‘Third Golden Age’ since 2005 – we are seeing mainstream stars actively board indie projects after falling in love with bold, original scripts,” Ishizaka says. “This has even spawned the portmanteau ‘maindie’ cinema.”

He points to directors Brillante Mendoza and Jun Robles Lana, who switch easily between commercial and small-scale indie work, as key links between the two worlds. Other industries in the region are seeing similar crossover.

If the 2010s belonged to Southeast Asian cinema, the story of the 2020s is still being written. For now, Ishizaka singles out Taiwan and South Korea for the strength of their public funding and institutional backing.

“Thematically, an exciting wave of emerging filmmakers from China’s autonomous regions – Tibet, Inner Mongolia, and Xinjiang – is stepping into the spotlight,” he says. “Mentored and inspired by trailblazing predecessors like the late Pema Tseden, these directors bring distinct regional perspectives and aesthetic sensibilities that set them apart from mainstream Chinese cinema.”

For emerging directors in Asian Future, Ishizaka says, the reactions of Tokyo audiences feed straight into their next projects, while meetings with visiting international programmers regularly lead to invitations from other festivals and co-production opportunities. Japan’s network of independent arthouse venues, known locally as mini-theaters, is supported by experienced distributors of international cinema.

“It is not uncommon for a festival premiere here to translate directly into a domestic theatrical distribution deal,” Ishizaka says. “Ultimately, our mission is to serve as an active springboard that fosters these industry connections.”

Ishizaka has spent much of his career studying documentary film and cultural exchange between Asia and the Middle East. Although Asian Future has no nonfiction titles this year, he sees a dramatic change in war documentaries from across Asia in the last five years.

“Miniature digital cameras mounted on helmets capture the harrowing frontline experience with visceral immediacy, yielding footage so intense it transcends realism into what can only be called the ‘hyper-real,’” he says. “It is the visual language of an era marked by conflict.”

Fiction features tackling the same subjects, by contrast, appear to be moving toward metaphor and allegory, he says.