Nippon Connection Film Festival 2025: First Highlights Of The 25th Anniversary

The countdown has begun! In just a few weeks, Frankfurt am Main will once again become the unofficial capital of Japan. From May 27 to June 1, 2025 the Nippon Connection Film Festival will celebrate its 25th anniversary, presenting a diverse program all about Japan. Founded as a student project, Nippon Connection is now the world's largest platform for contemporary Japanese cinema, screening around 100 short and feature-length films. The film program is complemented by over 70 cultural events, including artistic to culinary offerings.

This year's film program once again features films from a wide variety of genres. Whether it be touching dramas such as Mipo O's Living In Two Worlds, gripping animated films such as Gō Koga's The Birth Of Kitaro: The Mystery Of Ge Ge Ge, or Kazuya Shiraishi's visually stunning samurai film BUSHIDO, the festival has something to offer for all tastes. The majority of the films celebrate their German, European, or world premieres during the six days. Numerous filmmakers and artists will be traveling to the festival in person from Japan, including artist and art director Kōsuke Hayashi, this year's winner of the Nippon Rising Star Award, presented by KYOCERA Document Solutions. Thematically, the program revolves around Obsessions – From Passion To Madness, reflecting on the positive and negative manifestations of obsession within Japanese society. The thematic focus is supported by the Kulturfonds Frankfurt RheinMain.

To mark the anniversary, the retrospective Turning Point – Japanese Cinema Of The 90s is dedicated to the films that inspired the founding of the festival and the decade that is considered a turning point in Japan's film history.

The two festival centers Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm and Produktionshaus NAXOS provide an inviting atmosphere where visitors can explore the food and craft stalls of the Japanese market or attend open-air events free of charge. Numerous concerts, workshops, cooking classes, lectures, and exhibitions about Japan will also be held.

The complete program and tickets will be available on the festival website as of May 3. Hotel partners offer special conditions for a stay during the festival.

First Program Highlights
Thematic focus “Obsessions - From Passion To Madness”
Whether a particular passion or pathological perfectionism, obsession can take many different forms. In The Solitary Gourmet, Yutaka Matsushige, who both directs and stars in the film, sets out in search of the recipe for a very special soup. Junichiro Yagi's comedy Kaiju Guy! is a loving homage to filmmaking and the monster movie genre. Kazuya Shiraishi's drama BUSHIDO, which will be shown in Germany for the first time at the festival, is a furious revenge spectacle that pays tribute to classic Japanese samurai films. The documentary A Century In Sound by festival guest Nick Dwyer and Tu Neill is dedicated to the operators of so-called “Ongaku kissa” – bars and cafés where music can be enjoyed under the best audiophile conditions.

Animated films
Coming to Frankfurt am Main to accept this year's Nippon Rising Star Award is artist and art director Kōsuke Hayashi, who has been involved in creating some of the best anime of recent years, including “The Boy and the Heron” by Hayao Miyazaki. During the festival, the anime The Imaginary by Yoshiyuki Momose, for which Kōsuke Hayashi was responsible as art director, will be shown. Another animated film that audiences can look forward to is Yoko Kuno's and Nobuhiro Yamashita's Ghost Cat Anzu, in which young Karin has to get used to her new life in a temple together with a strangely human-like ghost cat. In POPREQ's debut film A Few Moments of Cheers, an ambitious student sets himself the task of producing a very special music video. The Birth Of Kitaro: The Mystery Of Ge Ge Ge by Gō Koga, who will attend the festival, tells the gruesome story of Kitaro, the ghost boy from the cemetery, adapted from Shigeru Mizuki's cult 1960s manga series. The German premiere of the animated film will be presented in the presence of the director and the producer.

Films by Japanese female directors
Women are still heavily underrepresented in the Japanese film industry, which is why this year's festival is placing a special focus on films by female directors. Living In Two Worlds by Mipo O is a touching drama about the life of Dai, who tries to navigate his way between the world of the hearing and that of his deaf parents. In her romance thriller CHA-CHA, which will be shown as a European premiere, director and festival guest Mai Sakai explores unconventional relationships and the dark secrets and obsessions that can lie behind them. Natsuki Seta will also present her latest film Worlds Apart in person at the festival. In this heartwarming drama, a chaotic writer and her orphaned niece try to find common ground. In MARU, Naoko Ogigami directs a sophisticated comedy about the absurdities of the art world with refined symbolism. In the Oscar-nominated documentary Black Box Diaries, director and journalist Shiori Itō reveals in a shocking manner the patriarchal structures in the Japanese justice and political systems that still exist to this day.

Retrospective “Turning Point – Japanese Cinema Of The 90s”
In the retrospective Turning Point – Japanese Cinema Of The 90s, twelve films from the 1990s will be presented in collaboration with The Japan Foundation. The high quality and creative diversity of Japanese film productions from this decade inspired the founding of the Nippon Connection Film Festival in 2000. Three films that were shown at the very first festival will be screened in the former festival center, the student house of Goethe University Frankfurt, to mark the anniversary: In Toshiaki Toyoda's underground thriller Pornostar (1998), a nameless man roams the streets of Shibuya and hunts down Yakuza. In addition to his debut film, Toyoda will also personally present the German premiere of his latest production Transcending Dimensions (2025) at the festival. Renowned director Nobuhiro Yamashita will also be a guest at the screening of his first film, the slacker comedy Hazy Life (1999). The zombie rock spectacle Wild Zero (1999) is Tetsurō Takeuchi's film debut and was particularly loved for its fantastic soundtrack. Other films in the retrospective will be shown at the DFF – Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum cinema and Cinéma Arthouse Kino.

Concerts, Workshops, Lectures & Kids' Program
On the occasion of the 25th anniversary, the culture program also offers a nostalgic look back. An exhibition presents the award-winning festival posters from the last 25 years. The two cult events, namely Nippon Heimkino with genre film experts Marcus Stiglegger and Kai Naumann, featuring Japanese trash cinema with live commentary, and the popular crowd karaoke, are also not to be missed. To mark the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, a panel discussion presented by media partner hr INFO will focus on how artists process the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Musical highlights include concerts by internationally successful music duo CHARAN PO RANTAN, renowned pianist Takuma Ishii, and girl rock band ЯeaL. Exciting insights into Japanese culture can be gained at workshops on the Japanese art of Shibari bondage, sumo wrestling, and the martial art of Katori Shinto.

A versatile childrens' program will also be available. Nippon Kids offers workshops on animation art, Japanese hip hop and film dubbing, among other things.

Event Locations
Festival Centers: Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm and Produktionshaus NAXOS Additional venues in Frankfurt am Main: Cinema of the DFF – Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum, Cinéma Arthouse Kino, Mal Seh'n Kino, International Theater Frankfurt, Pupille Kino, NaxosAtelier, Saalbau Bornheim

About The Festival
The Japanese Film Festival Nippon Connection is organized by the approximately 100-member, largely voluntary team of the non-profit association Nippon Connection e.V. It is under the patronage of Hessian State Minister of Higher Education, Research, Science and the Arts Timon Gremmels, Mayor of the City of Frankfurt am Main Mike Josef, and the Consulate General of Japan in Frankfurt am Main. Since its founding in 2000, Nippon Connection has become the world's largest platform for Japanese cinema and the most popular film festival in Hesse with around 19,000 visitors in 2024.

Further information about the history of the festival can be found at NipponConnection.com/en/history.