Nippon Connection 2025 Award Winners

Six days of unforgettable cinema experiences are over. In its 25th anniversary edition, the Japanese film festival Nippon Connection once again set an audience record with around 20,000 visitors over six days and confirmed its position as the film festival with the largest audience in Hesse. Most of the film and cultural events at the ten locations in Frankfurt am Main were sold out within a short space of time. Over 200 Japanese and international filmmakers and artists were on site, engaging in lively discussions with the audience.

On Sunday, June 1, the festival ended with the award ceremony. Art director and background artist Kosuke Hayashi was honored with the Nippon Rising Star Award – a prize dedicated to outstanding young talents in the Japanese film industry. Kosuke Hayashi became known as the art director of the animated film “The Imaginary” by Yoshiyuki Momose and as a background artist for Hayao Miyazaki’s “The Boy and the Heron”. The award was presented by KYOCERA Document Solutions.

Nippon Visions Jury Award Winner Naoya Kusaba

The international jury, consisting of Natsuki Seta (director), Thomas Waldner (Film Verleih Gruppe) and Panos Kotzathanasis (film critic), awarded two prizes at the festival. The Nippon Visions Jury Award went to director Naoya Kusaba for his multi-layered drama Yukiko a.k.a., in which a shy primary school teacher finds her voice in hip-hop. The jury was particularly impressed by the emotional storytelling and the protagonist’s search for identity. The prize is a free subtitling of the next film project and was donated for the fifteenth time by the Japan Visualmedia Translation Academy (JVTA) from Tokyo.

The Nippon Storytelling Award for the best screenplay was presented for the second time. The prize money of €1,000 was donated by the communications agency Storymaker and went to Ryota Kondo for his film Missing Child Videotape (Check out our review here). In his feature film debut, the independent director revives J-horror with an oppressively spooky sound design, seamlessly drawing on classics of the genre.

Nippon Storytelling Award Winner Ryota Kondo

The audience had the opportunity to vote on three further awards. The Nippon Cinema Award – sponsored for the twentieth time by Bankhaus Metzler in Frankfurt am Main and endowed with €4,000 – went to A Samurai In Time by Junichi Yasuda. This charming homage to the endangered genre of Japanese samurai films has already delighted audiences throughout Japan.

The eleventh Nippon Visions Audience Award went to the film Kaiju Guy! by Junichiro Yagi. With well-known comedian Gumpy in the leading role, the director presents an affectionate underdog story whose first screening was sold out after just a few days. The award is sponsored by the Japanese Culture and Language Center in Frankfurt and is endowed with €2,000.

Nippon Visions Audience Award Winner Junichiro Yagi

The winner of the Nippon Docs Award is the documentary Being Kazue by Hiroko Kumagai. In it the director portrays the life of Kazue Miyazaki, who suffers from leprosy but never loses her willpower, in a very sensitive way. This year marks the sixth time that the €2,000 prize has been awarded.

The date for the 26th Nippon Connection Film Festival has already been set. From June 2 to 7, 2026, Frankfurt am Main will once again become the center of Japanese cinema!

Selected films from the festival will be screened in the Rhine-Main region over the next few months as part of the thematic focus “Obsessions – From Passion to Madness”. The dates will be announced on the festival website: NipponConnection.com