Japanese Film Festival Online

It’s not an easy task to hunt down non-mainstream movies to watch at home, especially when you’re looking for films from outside of the western world, and especially not for free (well, legally anyway). Luckily, the Japanese Film Festival (JFF) is back, with an eclectic selection of 23 films available to stream online all around Australia.

Returning from June 5 to July 3, this global initiative has dropped a rich program of cutting-edge films for every movie buff – including thrillers, dramas, comedies and documentaries. Plus, some past JFF hits will be returning,  and for the first time, there are also two dramatic series joining the selection.

For those that can’t get enough of Japanese cuisine, The Zen Diary is a gentle film on isolation and gastronomy that feeds the soul. If slow-paced is your style, then don’t look past the romantic film We Made a Beautiful Bouquet, which follows a couple over five years and was written by a recent Cannes winner Yūji Sakamoto.

Watch women challenge gender stereotypes in I am what I am, where a young woman seeks to live a solitary life, and in the action-comedy Baby Assassins, two high schoolers are also highly trained assassins.

Anime fans should check out Anime Supremacy!, where two directors – one a rookie and the other a hotshot – are tasked with bringing the next big anime shows to life. Meanwhile, in BL Metamorphosis, two women strike up an intergenerational friendship when they bond over manga.

For the kids, the classic animated film Kimba the White Lion is playing. Adapted in the ‘60s from the works of Astro Boy creator Osamu Tezuka (who is often considered the Walt Disney of Japan) this epic film has been given an upgrade with a 4K restoration. Or stream Single8, a coming-of-age story set in the ‘70s where a group of high schoolers band together to make a Super 8 film.

On the television series front, you can stream Downtown Rocket, which follows small town factory workers taking on the fight against large corporations; and on the flipside, there’s Rikuoh, a miniseries that tells the story of a CEO running a long-standing company that’s on the verge of falling apart.

Let the world of Japanese cinema light up your screens as you get up to speed with some of the best new films from the land of the rising sun screening from June 5-19, or catch the television series' from June 19 to July 3.

Sign up is free, and all movies in JFF Online include English subtitles. Find out more here.