The Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme

The UK’s largest festival of Japanese cinema, the Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme, returns with a compelling new edition exploring the question: is it really possible to know our true selves? And if so, would such revelations lead to happiness — or might they instead bring unforeseen and even disastrous consequences?

Under the theme Knowing Me, Knowing You: The True Self in Japanese Cinema, this year’s programme brings together some of the most unmissable Japanese films, both past and present, screening at cinemas across the UK. The season reflects on identity, connection, secrecy and self-discovery, presenting stories that are intimate, unsettling, exhilarating and deeply human.

The line-up spans genres and generations. Blue Boy Trial offers a ground-breaking true story that marked a turning point for LGBTQ+ visibility in Japan, while Yoshimitsu Morita’s timeless classic Like Asura examines family feuds and buried secrets with sharp emotional insight. A Bad Summer delivers explosive social satire through the story of a welfare caseworker pushed to breaking point, and ANGRY SQUAD: The Civil Servant and the Seven Swindlers injects humour and tension into a high-stakes tale of revenge and deception.

Action and suspense pulse through Ghost Killer, a kinetic martial arts film laced with sharp humour, while Teki Cometh unfolds as a striking monochrome thriller in which the past refuses to stay buried. Fans of horror can experience Missing Child Videotape, a slow-burn ghost story steeped in classic J-horror atmosphere and dread.

More tender reflections on identity and human connection are found in She Taught Me Serendipity, where fate and friendship intertwine in youth, and in The Last Blossom, a poignant anime contemplating life, love and the possibility of redemption.

Together, the films form a rich and varied meditation on the search for the “true self” — questioning whether clarity brings liberation, or whether some truths are better left undiscovered. Co-presented with the Japan Foundation, the programme offers audiences a rare opportunity to engage with the breadth, depth and evolving voices of contemporary and classic Japanese cinema.