BENGALURU: Fans of Japanese anime, movies, drama, and everything in between can unite once again as the sixth edition of the Japanese Film Festival (JFF) is back in the city to give you the best of Japanese anime and live-action films on the big screen. Organized by the Japan Foundation, the festival will be showing some of the best and most popular films from Japan at INOX, Mantri Square Mall, Malleswaram from December 7 to 10.
“We are glad that the JFF, which began in 2017, is now in its sixth edition and has become an annual event for the people of India. Anime is very popular in India, but we hope that through this film festival, people will also discover the appeal of the latest Japanese feature films,” says Koji Sato, director general of the The Japan Foundation, New Delhi.
This year’s edition will be a proper film festival after the pandemic as the last year focused only on anime and music. The foundation has also expanded to Hyderabad and Pune for the first time, alongside Bengaluru, Delhi, Kolkata and Chennai. Talking about the reason behind including live-action films, Sato says, “Anime has a great following in India, which has really boomed post the pandemic. So this year we thought of increasing more live-action films, we wanted comedy, romance as well as thrillers. For the anime, we went with two of the most renowned franchises that are available in Japan, Detective Conan (now called Case Closed) and Lupin the Third, which have been really popular in Japan for decades now.”
Another highlight of the festival is Anime Supremacy!, an intersection between anime as well as live-action, which shows the process behind how anime is made. “It feels like a documentary but it’s more of a blockbuster film where two parties are simultaneously competing,” explains Sato.
Talking about the response of the city, Sato says, “Last year the response was incredible since it was specifically focusing on anime. We had multiple housefull shows and people were asking for more shows for certain films like Makoto Shinkai’s Your Name. This time also we are seeing the same trend, and famous ones like Monster and We Made a Beautiful Bouquet were already sold out in days. The best part is, surprisingly, we didn’t expect certain movies like Father of the Milky Way Railroad to do well. But they are doing exceptionally well.”