Japan’s Cannes Classics Return to the Croisette for Country of Honor Screening Day

Four Japanese films that each competed at the Cannes Film Festival will screen on May 16 as part of Japan‘s Country of Honor program at the Cannes Film Market, spanning 36 years of the country’s Cannes history.

The lineup opens with Ichikawa Kon’s “Her Brother” (1960), which was selected for competition at the 1961 Cannes Film Festival. The film follows the relationship between a strong-willed older sister and a younger brother who, starved of affection amid a difficult family dynamic, slides toward delinquency. Starring Kishi Keiko and Kawaguchi Hiroshi, with cinematography by Miyagawa Kazuo, the film is held by Kadokawa Corp.

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Kobayashi Masaki’s “Kwaidan” (1965) follows, the anthology film that won the Special Jury Prize at the 18th Cannes Film Festival. It adapts four supernatural tales drawn from the ghost story collections of Lafcadio Hearn, and is noted for its elaborate production design. Nakadai Tatsuya lead the cast in a work that also received an Academy Award nomination in the category that was then known as the best foreign-language film.

Imamura Shohei‘s “Black Rain” (1989), selected for competition at the 42nd Cannes Film Festival, brings the program into the postwar era. Set five years after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, the film follows a young woman and her uncle as they contend with the community’s lasting physical and psychological wounds, and the stigma that blocks her prospects for marriage.

The screening day closes with Imamura’s “The Eel” (1997), winner of the Palme d’Or at the 50th Cannes Film Festival — a prize the director shared that year with Abbas Kiarostami’s “Taste of Cherry.” Starring Yakusho Koji, the film follows a man released on parole after killing his unfaithful wife. He retreats from human contact and opens a barbershop, until a chance encounter with a woman he saves from suicide begins to draw him back toward society.

Imamura’s double presence in the program — with both a competition title and the festival’s top prize — gives the lineup particular weight. The Japan Screening Day forms part of a broader Country of Honor program that includes an industry summit, the Japan IP Market and a series of conferences running throughout the market through May 20.