Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on November 2011

Tokyo Filmex, the pan-Asian film festival founded by director Takeshi Kitano and associates, returns for its 12th installment on November 19-27 at Yurakucho Asahi Hall. Highlights include Old Dog, a story of urban development and familial strife in Tibet and River, about a young woman in Tokyo struggling to overcome the death of her boyfriend in the Akihabara massacre. Special programs include a pair of documentaries on famed director Nicholas Ray, to mark the centenary of his birth, and a selection of films by late director Shinji Somai, who changed the direction of “idol films” in the ’80s. Leading up to Filmex, Auditorium Shibuya (1-5 Maruyamacho, Shibuya-ku ; a-shibuya.jp) will celebrate veteran Iranian director Amir Naderi with the appropriately named “Viva Naderi!” November 11-12. The mini-fest features two of the films the director made in America: Vegas: Based on a True Story (2008; pictured) which tells the story of a struggling family living on the outskirts of Sin City, and Sound Barrier (2005) about a deaf boy searching New York for a message left for him by his late mother. Naderi’s latest work, Cut, an homage to Japanese cinema, will have its Asian premiere at Filmex. http://filmex.net/2011/en/

Unless otherwise noted, Japanese films are shown without English subtitles and non-English language films are shown with only Japanese subtitles.