Japan Visits The Main: Nippon Connection Film & Culture Festival 2025

Posted on by Jim Cox

Follow by Email
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram

Japan Visits The Main: Frankfurt Becomes A Hotspot Of Japanese Cinema & Culture. The complete program of the 25th Nippon Connection Film Festival May 27 – June 1, 2025, Frankfurt am Main

On Tuesday, May 27, 2025, the Nippon Connection Film Festival in Frankfurt am Main will open its doors for the 25th time! For six days, the world’s largest festival for Japanese cinema will present a varied program with over 100 current short and feature-length films as well as around 70 cultural events, including concerts, workshops, lectures, and exhibitions. With over 10,000 tickets already sold in advance and numerous events sold out, as well as around 200 filmmakers and artists attending, another record-breaking festival appears to be in store. The full program and tickets are available at NipponConnection.com.

“What began as a student project in 2000 has developed into an internationally recognized meeting place for Japanese film and culture over the last 25 years. We are celebrating this anniversary with a program that impressively reflects the diversity, creativity, and relevance of Japanese cinema.” – Marion Klomfass (Festival Director).

The festival will open on May 27 at 7:00 p.m. at Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm with Tetsu Maeda’s film 90 Years Old – So What?. At NAXOS Kino, the festival starts at 7:30 p.m. with the film New Nemuro Pro Wrestling Story by Hiroshi Minato. From 7:30 p.m., visitors can look forward to an opening night consisting of traditional nihon buyo dancing, freshly made mochi balls, sumo wrestling in the Mousonturm courtyard, and nostalgic 1980s beats with DJ neelie.

On Wednesday, May 28 at 6:00 p.m., the festival will present an exclusive silent film screening at the DFF cinema. The Water Magician by Kenji Mizoguchi will be narrated live by world-famous benshi (film narrator) Ichiro Kataoka with Günter A. Buchwald accompanying on the piano. Escape by veteran director Masao Adachi tells the real-life story of Satoshi Kirishima, Japan’s most wanted terrorist. The film will be screened on Friday, May 30, at 2:30 p.m. at NAXOS Kino. Then, at 5:00 p.m., Yoshihiko Taniguchi’s touching independent drama Happy Life will have its international premiere there. Also on Friday, at 9:15 p.m., the animated film The Imaginary by Yoshiyuki Momose, a homage to childhood imagination, will be shown at Cinéma Arthouse Kino. The screening will take place in the presence of this year’s NIPPON RISING STAR AWARD winner, Kosuke Hayashi, who played a key role in shaping the film’s imaginative visual language as art director. The anime will be shown a second time on Sunday, June 1 at 7:45 p.m., following the award ceremony at Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm. On Saturday, May 31 at 10:00 p.m., Janus Victoria’s debut film Diamonds In The Sand, in which a down-on-his-luck office worker seeks his fortune in Manila, will celebrate its German premiere at NAXOS Kino.

Since many film screenings and events were sold out shortly after advance ticket sales began, additional screenings of the following films are now available: Kaiju Guy! by Junichiro Yagi (May 30 at 3:00 p.m. at Mal Seh’n Kino), Morito Inoue’s hilarious trash gem Hotspring SharkAttack (May 31 at 2:00 p.m. at Mal Seh’n Kino), the documentary A Century In Sound by Nick Dwyer and Tuill Neill (May 31 at 1:00 p.m. at the DFF cinema), River Returns by Masakazu Kaneko (June 1 at 12:30 p.m. in the DFF cinema), and Shiori Ito’s moving documentary Black Box Diaries (May 29 at 3:30 p.m. in the DFF cinema).

The two festival centers, Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm and Produktionshaus NAXOS, provide the festival’s unique atmosphere. Over 45 Japanese market stalls on the freely accessible festival grounds will offer ramen, sushi, Japanese ice cream, and other delicacies. Visitors can also browse through a large selection of arts and crafts as well as books, films, vinyl soundtracks, and more.

The events and film screenings will take place in the two festival venues, Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm and Produktionshaus NAXOS, as well as in eight other venues: Cinéma Arthouse Kino, Kino des DFF – Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum, Mal Seh’n Kino, Pupille – Kino in der Uni, Internationales Theater Frankfurt, Saalbau Bornheim, NaxosAtelier, and NAXOS Galerie.

The complete program and tickets are available on the festival website here.

Event Locations

Festival Centers: Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm and Produktionshaus NAXOS
Additional venues in Frankfurt am Main: Cinema of the DFF – Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum, Cinéma Arthouse Kino, Mal Seh’n Kino, International Theater Frankfurt, Pupille Kino, NaxosAtelier, Saalbau Bornheim, NAXOS Galerie

About The Festival

The Japanese Film Festival Nippon Connection is organized by the approximately 100-member, largely voluntary team of the non-profit association Nippon Connection e.V. It is under the patronage of Hessian State Minister of Higher Education, Research, Science and the Arts Timon Gremmels, Mayor of the City of Frankfurt am Main Mike Josef, and the Consulate General of Japan in Frankfurt am Main. Since its founding in 2000, Nippon Connection has become the world’s largest platform for Japanese cinema and the most popular film festival in Hesse, with around 19,000 visitors in 2024. A campaign to support the festival is being run via the online platform betterplace.org.

Further information about the history of the festival can be found here.

More Film Reviews