Kanazawa Film Festival Returns for 2025 with an Ambitious, Spiritually Focused Program

The esteemed Kanazawa Film Festival is set for its return from September 18 to 23, 2025, taking place at the Theater 21 within the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art. Renowned for its daring curation and broad international scope, the festival is poised to unveil a lineup that aims to bridge the past and future of cinema, featuring deep retrospectives, pivotal world premieres, and the introduction of bold new talent.

The intellectual core of this year’s program is the centerpiece retrospective, “Transcendental Style in Film.” This thematic selection is inspired by the seminal film theory proposed by critic Paul Schrader and includes rare screenings of works by masters of slow cinema, such as Ozu Yasujiro, Robert Bresson, Carl Theodor Dreyer, and Andrei Tarkovsky. These international icons will be featured alongside contemporary Japanese auteurs who share a similar minimalist sensibility, including Gakuryu Ishii, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, and Kunihiko Manda.

The festival will open dramatically with the long-awaited animated epic, The Psychedelic Hand-Painted Scroll – Zashikiro. Directed by Hiroshi Harada, known for Midori – The Camellia Girl, this staggering 33-year labor of love features 60,000 hand-drawn frames and will be presented with special live staging, promising a truly immersive start to the event.

Key Festival Highlights and Competitions

In addition to the main retrospective, the festival features several other distinguished sections:

• Documentaries & Talks: “Paths to Transcendence and Liberation”: This program pairs films focusing on themes of spirituality, ritual, altered states, and witchcraft with live discussions, encouraging deeper dialogue on cinematic expression of the metaphysical.

  
  

• Choice of Kanazawa (International Competition): This section features a diverse selection of 19 films from across the globe, underscoring the richness of world cinema. The films originate from a wide range of territories, including five from Korea, four from Iran, three from India, and three from the United States, alongside entries from Mexico, Canada, Ukraine, and a joint Kuwait–Pakistan production.

  
  

• Japanese New Directors Competition: This highly anticipated competition will screen three finalists chosen from 93 submissions nationwide, continuing a tradition that has championed notable alumni such as Yugo Sakamoto (Baby Assassins).

Co-Hosted Premiere: A Leap to the Global Stage

A significant event on the calendar is the Tatemachi Film Festival 2025, co-hosted by the Kanazawa Film Festival. This partnership proudly presents the world premiere of Debone, the fifth film to receive support from the Kanazawa Film Festival Scholarship, which is sponsored in collaboration with the Tatemachi Shopping District. Debone is the debut feature film from rising Korean director Lee Dae-han, following his award-winning shorts that have received acclaim at international festivals. Having won the Grand Prize in Kanazawa’s short film competition last year, this premiere represents Lee's crucial leap onto the global stage. The screening is scheduled for September 22, 2025, with both director Lee and key cast members traveling from Korea to attend.

The festival is organized by the Eiga no Kai Association, with crucial partnership support from the Tatemachi Shopping District, the National Film Archive of Japan, and the Kanazawa Film Commission. It receives financial support from the Japan Arts Council and Kanazawa City.