‘Japan is a country where cultural budgets are extremely limited,’ Fukada told AFP – Copyright AFP Valery HACHE<\/p>\n
The Japanese film industry, fresh from a record box office year in 2025, is carrying its domestic momentum into the Cannes Film Festival where it made its debut Wednesday with Koji Fukada\u2019s latest movie.<\/p>\n
Fukada\u2019s quiet portrait of solitude and thwarted love in rural Japan with his \u201cNagi Notes\u201d is one of three Japanese movies in the 22-strong main competition in Cannes, the world\u2019s biggest film festival.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll of a Sudden\u201d, the first French-language film from Ryusuke Hamaguchi \u2014 who got two Oscar nominations for \u201cDrive My Car\u201d \u2014 and the widely tipped tech-themed \u201cSheep in the Box\u201d by art-house favourite Hirokazu Kore-eda of \u201cShoplifters\u201d fame complete the line-up.<\/p>\n
Japan is also the country of honour in the Cannes film market, a vast annual gathering of industry executives where projects and rights are acquired by producers and distributors from around the world.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very gratifying that so many Japanese films are submitted and evaluated (at the festival),\u201d Fukada told AFP in an interview on Wednesday. \u201cBut I don\u2019t think that necessarily indicates the health of Japanese films in Japanese society.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fukada, whose previous films include \u201cHarmonium\u201d and last year\u2019s \u201cLove on Trial\u201d about J-pop stars, counters that record revenue figures for the Japanese box office last year disguise struggles for independent auteurs like him.<\/p>\n
The biggest-grossing films in Japan in 2025 \u2014 blockbuster \u201cDemon Slayer\u201d, period drama \u201cKokuho\u201d which debuted in Cannes last year, and anime hit \u201cDetective Conan: One-Eyed Flashback\u201d \u2014 helped push box office revenues beyond their previous pre-Covid record high in 2019.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Exploring loneliness \u2013<\/p>\n
\u201cJapan is a country where cultural budgets are extremely limited, and public-sector support for film is modest,\u201d Fukada said.<\/p>\n
\u201cNagi Notes\u201d, starring Takako Matsu and\u00a0Shizuka Ishibashi, explores the overlapping lives of a cast of characters in rural Okayama Prefecture, each lonely in their own way.<\/p>\n
The theme of forbidden gay and lesbian love runs throughout.<\/p>\n
\u201cLoneliness isn\u2019t limited to people who live in the countryside. Whether you live in the countryside or in the city, the very act of living is lonely and difficult,\u201d Fukada, a Cannes regular since his 2016 break-out hit \u201cHarmonium\u201d, added.<\/p>\n
Loneliness \u201cis like an illness you\u2019re born with and can\u2019t cure\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis film features both heterosexuals and sexual minorities, but for lesbians or gays, one of the major ways they can forget their loneliness is to get married and live with a partner, which is very difficult,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s difficult because in Japan, same-sex marriage is not yet recognised legally.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cannes runs until May 23 when the prestigious Palme d\u2019Or will be handed out for best film.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"‘Japan is a country where cultural budgets are extremely limited,’ Fukada told AFP – Copyright AFP Valery HACHE…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21687,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5681,1083,935,3209,3668,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-21686","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-japan","8":"tag-cannes","9":"tag-celebrity","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-film","12":"tag-france","13":"tag-japan"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21686\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}