JUNE 1 ― As a film geek based in Malaysia, film festival culture is not something that most Malaysians are used to. In fact, we don’t even have a long-running international film festival that’s comparable to the Singapore International Film Festival, which leaves local cinephiles mostly reliant on home video releases or country- or region-specific film festivals organised by the respective embassies to satiate our thirst for foreign language films, like the Japanese Film Festival, the Le French Film Festival, the European Film Festival and the Latin American Film Festival, which have all surpassed or approached their 20th year here. Or, like I’ve mostly done throughout the years, just go to Singapore to attend the SGIFF to catch up on all the films I want to catch that have played in festivals like Cannes, Locarno, Venice and Berlin earlier that particular year.
Of course, that would involve quite a bit of expense (and annual leave from work!), and sometimes you just don’t have enough time to do so, which is why the recently announced Japanese Film Festival Online is such a life-saver for fans of Japanese cinema. Featuring up to 23 feature films and two TV dramas that can be streamed for free in 27 countries (including Malaysia, of course), not everything featured is a new release, but it also means that you can catch up with a hugely fun cult favourite like Baby Assassins (from 2021) and an established classic like Twenty-Four Eyes (from 1954) alongside newer title.