Leeds Film Festival line up 2024

Several live-action Japanese features have been selected for the 38th Leeds International Film Festival, which runs November 1st–17th this year, including the UK premieres of new works by Kenichi Ugana (Wild Virgins, Rolling Marbles), Kiyoshi Kurosawa (The Guard from Underground, Serpent’s Path, Eyes of the Spider) and Sho Miyake (And Your Bird Can Sing, Small, Slow but Steady).

However, the only anime selected is Extremely Short (Totemo mijikai), the latest short animated, produced and directed by Koji Yamamura.

It will play as part of World Animation Competition 1, on Friday, 8 November, at 6.00 pm and Monday, 11 November, at 1.45 pm at Vue Leeds The Light, and on 13 November at 7.30 pm at the St. Luke’s Cares Charity Shop.

The screenings at Vue are charged at the festival’s standard prices for programmes of shorts; the screening at St. Luke’s Cares is free.

Yamamura is arguably the most respected independent animator still regularly creating work in Japan today and certainly the most highly garlanded. Perhaps his best-known works internationally are the Annecy Crystal winner and Oscar® nominee Mt. Head, Ottawa Grand Prize winner Franz Kafka’s “A Country Doctor” and his debut feature, the Ottawa Grand Prize and Annecy Contrechamp winner Dozens of Norths.

The new, five-minute animated short, which is a Japan–US co-production, is based on a short story by Hideo Furukawa (writer of the translation and original novel that Science SARU’s The Heike Story and INU-OH are based on), who also narrates it. The music is composed by Sunao Isaji. It premiered in the 56th Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes, France, in May this year, and it has now been selected for over 35 festivals.

It won Best Contemporary & Experimental Short at the 19th Sapporo International Short Film Festival in Japan and the Grand Prix Golden Jabberwocky, the festival’s top award for animation, at the 31st Etiuda&Anima International Film Festival in Krakow, Poland, both in October.