Launched in 2004 to promote digital cinema, the Skip City International D-Cinema Festival (July 13-21) in Kawaguchi, Saitama Prefecture, has become a showcase for emerging filmmakers. Among the Skip City alumni who have gone on to thriving careers are Cannes Palme d¡¯Or winner Nuri Bilge Ceylan (¡°Winter Sleep¡°), Kazuya Shiraishi (¡°The Blood of Wolves¡°), Ryota Nakano (¡°Her Love Boils Bathwater¡°) and Shinichiro Ueda (¡°One Cut of the Dead¡°).
Ueda, who has had two films in the festival¡¯s shorts competition, is back with this year¡¯s opener, ¡°Aesop¡¯s Game.¡± A comedy he co-directed with Naoya Asanuma and Yuya Nakaizumi, it¡¯s packed with twists, all supplied by Ueda, who wrote the original script. If you liked ¡°One Cut of the Dead,¡± a zombie comedy with a brilliant film-within-a-film structure that earned a stupendous ?3.2 billion, you¡¯ll want to check out this one as well.
One standout this year is ¡°Travel Nostalgia¡± by Chinese filmmaker Qinyao Wu in the International competition.
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