Remaining Japanese Films at NYAFF
24th New York Asian Film Festival
Walter Reade Theater – 165 W. 65th Street
Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center Amphitheater – 144 W. 65th Street
LOOK Cinemas – 657 W. 57th Street
SVA Theatre – 333 W. 23rd Street
The New York Asian Film Foundation and Film at Lincoln Center present the 24th edition of the New York Asian Film Festival (NYAFF). This year marks NYAFF’s most globally expansive lineup . From blockbusters to indie treasures, NYAFF offers a rare opportunity to discover emerging talent and groundbreaking voices from across the region.
This year’s theme is “Cinema as Disruption”—spotlighting bold, genre-defying films that challenge, provoke, and reimagine. From unsettling horror and feminist thrillers to cosmic punk epics and political allegories, NYAFF celebrates the power of Asian cinema to defy convention.
“This year’s lineup dares to confront, question, and dream—exactly what cinema should do,” says Samuel Jamier, NYAFF Executive Director. To see the full lineup and to purchase tickets, please visit NYAFF’s website.
The remaining Japanese films include Transcending Dimensions, Blue Spring, 9 Souls, How Dare You?, Ravens, Samurai Fury, Jinsei, and Babanba Banban Vampire. Several screenings
Saturday, July 19 at 9:15 p.m.
Walter Reade Theater – 165 W. 65th Street
Admission: $19 General | $16 Seniors, Students, and Persons with Disabilities | $14 Film at Lincoln Center Members
Transcending Dimensions
2025 | 97 minutes | Japanese with English subtitles
North American Premiere
Matsuri to Midnight + Q&A with NYAFF 2025 Filmmaker in Focus Toshiaki Toyoda
Reaffirming his status as one of Japan’s most daring cinema provocateurs, NYAFF 2025 Filmmaker in Focus Toshiaki Toyoda returns with his first feature in seven years. A pulsing flirtation with the surreal, and an enthralling masterwork exploding with visceral and cerebral delights, Transcending Dimensions fuses sci-fi and crime into a meditation on the very nature of existence, time, and belief. Blending concepts that he’s been exploring in his brilliant “Mt. Resurrection Wolf” series of shorts, Toyoda immerses viewers in an aesthetically transfixing vision of inner and outer worlds. Set against a backdrop of collapsing realities and cosmic uncertainty, his new film delivers an epic journey involving four men: an earnest hit man (frequent collaborator Ryuhei Matsuda), a gullible monk, a mountain mystic, and a powerful sorcerer. Soon, faux religions, yakuza-style violence, and environmental collapse threaten to collide.
Ticket holders are invited to the Furman Gallery for Matsuri to Midnight before the screening starts.
Blue Spring © Taiyo Matsumoto/Shogakukan・"Blue Spring"Film Partners 2001
Sunday, July 20 at 12:30 p.m.
Walter Reade Theater – 165 W. 65th Street
Admission: $19 General | $16 Seniors, Students, and Persons with Disabilities | $14 Film at Lincoln Center Members
Blue Spring
2002 | 83 minutes | Japanese with English subtitles
Special Screening
Q&A with NYAFF 2025 Filmmaker in Focus Toshiaki Toyoda
NYAFF presents a special 35mm screening of Toshiaki Toyoda’s seminal classic Blue Spring. This groundbreaking, provocative film captured the malaise and disillusionment of a generation of youth coming of age at the turn of the millennium in a post-bubble Japan, where the norms of the past felt irrelevant and the future uncertain. With serious verve and a roiling badass soundtrack, this tale of power and rebellion grabs the viewer and doesn’t let go.
In their graduation year, disaffected students turn their concrete box of a school into a backdrop against which to create their own version of society. The newly elected boss Kujo (Ryuhei Matsuda) disdains all the rules, including those that have led to his election. Into this power vacuum, his scandalized friend and lieutenant Aoki (Hirofumi Arai) enters with vicious intent. As graduation looms, the pupils study violence and death.
9 Souls © 2003 Little More Co., ltd
Sunday, July 20 at 3:15 p.m.
LOOK Cinemas – 657 W. 57th Street
Admission: $15
9 SOULS
2003 | 120 minutes | Japanese with English subtitles
Special Screening
Part of NYAFF’s 2025 Filmmaker in Focus on Toshiaki Toyoda, 9 SOULS is the surrealist comedy addition to Toyoda’s body of work. Following his nihilist punk youth drama Blue Spring, Toyoda showcases his genre range with a mashup of gangster drama, satire, and comedy. Though it may be different in tone, 9 SOULS nevertheless shows Toyoda’s signature rebelliousness and cult style.
Nine convicts escape from prison; most are convicted murderers. They commandeer a van from a strip club. Their plan is to find a stash of counterfeit money that a deranged cell mate told them about, divide it, then part ways. They make it to the site where the money is supposed to be hidden, and then one by one, each seeks out the place he wants to be, a version of home, somewhere to connect. Will it end well for any of them?
Sunday, July 20 at 4:30 p.m.
Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center Amphitheater – 144 W. 65th Street
Master Class with Tadanobu Asano and Mark Gill
Admission: $10 for general public and $5 for FLC & NYAFF members
An in-depth master class with renowned actor Tadanobu Asano (Shōgun) and the director of Ravens, Mark Gill.
Sunday, July 20 at 6:15 p.m.
Walter Reade Theater – 165 W. 65th Street
Admission: $19 General | $16 Seniors, Students, and Persons with Disabilities | $14 Film at Lincoln Center Members
How Dare You?
2025 | 96 minutes | Japanese with English subtitles
North American Premiere
Q&A with Mipo O
Grade schooler Yuishi becomes infatuated with schoolmate Kokoa when she gives an impassioned class speech about saving the environment in the spirit of Greta Thunberg. Soon after they team up with the class troublemaker, and Yuishi finds himself both on a self-righteous crusade of activism and in a precocious love triangle. When the trio’s antics escalate to unexpected consequences, they must all own up to the cold, hard truth.
Director Mipo O proves not only her insightful sense of humor, but also a knack for getting naturalistic performances out of her young cast. With its cleverly wry script that takes on both huge moral issues and murmurs of the heart from a child’s viewpoint, How Dare You? is a winningly observant and bittersweet cautionary tale for both young and old alike.
Ravens ©Vestapol Films, Ark Entertainment, Minded Factory, Y house, Katsize Films
Sunday, July 20 at 9:00 p.m.
Walter Reade Theater – 165 W. 65th Street
Premium Screening: $25 for general public; $20 for seniors, students, persons with disabilities, and members
Ravens
2024 | 116 minutes | Japanese and English with English subtitles
New York Premiere
Q&A with Mark Gill, Tadanobu Asano, and cinematographer Fernando Ruiz
In Mark Gill’s hauntingly beautiful portrait of legendary Japanese photographer Masahisa Fukase, Golden Globe winner Tadanobu Asano (Shōgun) commands the spotlight with his trademark manic energy and melancholy grandeur, reminding us not only of his irresistible charm, but of his immense talents.
In a story spanning 50 years, ranging from Shinjuku’s iconic Golden Gai to New York’s MoMA, Asano embraces both the dark and the light and, with his luminous costar Kumi Takiuchi (A Balance), brings the tortured artist and his obsessions to exhilarating life. With the support of the Fukase Archives, Oscar- and BAFTA-nominated director Gill (The Voorman Problem, England Is Mine) creates an achingly poetic film driven by a pulsating yesteryear soundtrack, shot with exquisite period sensitivity, tinged with magical realism, and layered with Fukase’s own iconic images, evoking the fractured beauty of a life lived on the knifepoint of genius and madness.
Samurai Fury. Courtesy of Well Go USA
Tuesday, July 22 at 6:00 p.m.
SVA Theatre – 333 W. 23rd Street
Admission: $15
Samurai Fury
2025 | 135 minutes | Japanese with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere
Yu Irie’s thrilling jidaigeki epic vividly portrays rebellion during Japan’s tumultuous Muromachi period. Hasuda (Yo Oizumi), a rogue warrior reminiscent of Mifune, gathers a crew of fighters, including a bojutsu prodigy (Kento Nagao), to challenge the oppressive shogunate. Mixing spaghetti-western grit, wuxia flair, and dynamic swordplay, this adaptation of Ryosuke Kakine’s novel is brilliantly filmed at Toei Kyoto Studio.
Samurai Fury combines breathtaking cinematography, electrifying choreography, and gripping historical drama, depicting a pivotal era’s brutality and beauty, as well as a desperate fight for justice that alters Japan’s destiny.
Jinsei ©RYUYA SUZUKI
Friday, July 25 at 9:00 p.m.
SVA Theatre – 333 W. 23rd Street
Admission: $15
Jinsei
2025 | 93 minutes | Japanese with English subtitles
North American Premiere
2025 NYAFF Uncaged Award Nominee
Intro and Q&A with director Ryuya Suzuki
Jinsei follows the life of one man over 100 years. The main character’s life is broken up into chapters, distinguished by the evolution of his name, or rather the names he goes by. He is a child, an orphan, a budding J-pop star, an outcast, a leader, an oracle. Employing a lo-fi style, director Ryuya Suzuki immerses the viewer in this man’s life, and as each chapter evolves so does the picture’s framing, color palette, and editing style.
Epic in scope, Jinsei is one of the most original Japanese animated films in years. Over nearly two years, newcomer Suzuki wrote, directed, animated, and edited this tour-de-force by himself, determined to bring his captivating vision to life. Essential, experiential viewing, this is one that must be seen on the big screen.
Sunday, July 27 at 6:00 p.m.
SVA Theatre – 333 W. 23rd Street
Admission: $15
Babanba Banban Vampire
2025 | 105 minutes | Japanese with English subtitles
Love bites, and so does he—but only when the neck is ripest. In this adaptation of Hiromasa Okujima's cult manga, 450-year-old vampire Ranmaru (Ryo Yoshizawa) works at a traditional bathhouse while stalking his next meal: 15-year-old heir Rihito (Rihito Itagaki), whose virgin blood he craves. When Rihito falls for a classmate, Ranmaru declares war. His desperate sabotage attempts turn the town into a battlefield of cockblocking chaos.
Director Shinji Hamasaki delivers this BL-tinged bloodbath with fang-sharp wit, featuring a 2025 remix of the classic bathhouse anthem "Ii Yu da na." One question remains: Is protecting your dinner's virginity harder than immortality itself?
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