For the first time, our festival will feature a juried competition, with 16 films competing for the Grand Jury Feature Film Award, the Best Short Film Award, and the Francis Kwong Memorial Award recognizing an emerging director.

Schedule:

2:00 p.m - 3:30 p.m: A Samurai in Time
A time-traveling samurai finds his calling as an actor in the Japanese sleeper hit of 2024

Midwest Premiere
Japan, Fantasy Comedy, 2024, 74 minutes
In Japanese w/ English Subtitles
Director/Screenwriter: Junichi Yasuda
Starring: Makiya Yamaguchi, Norimasa Fuke, Yuno Sakura, Rantaro Mine, Ken Shonozaki
Film Source: Third Window Films
Director Junichi Yasuda and actress Yuno Sakura are scheduled to introduce the film and participate in a post-film Q&A.
In the Edo period, a samurai is struck by lightning and transported to the present day. Thanks to his “authentic” outfit and speaking style, the samurai ends up finding his calling as a “kiraeyaku,” a swordsman in the samurai genre whose job is to get killed on-screen. A tribute to Seizo Fukumoto, the late samurai genre actor who died more than 50,000 times on-screen, Junichi Yasuda’s high-concept comedy is a refreshing twist on both the time-traveling and the samurai genres. The self-funded film opened on one screen and slowly grew in popularity on word-of-mouth, becoming the sleeper hit of 2024.

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