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 titles like Single8 and Father Of The Milky Way Railroad, both from 2023.

I got to watch a few titles in advance of the festival, which commences at 11am on June 3 and ends at 11am on July 3, which means that you have a whole month to stream these films online, so here are a few of the lower profile ones that I think you should check out.

Kiba: The Fangs of Fiction

This is an older film from 2021, but I don’t think it has made too much headway into the international market, so this is a great opportunity to catch this outstanding film, which I think is one of the best in the lineup of JFF Online 2024.

Directed by Daihachi Yoshida (most famous for his debut film Funuke Show Some Love, You Losers!), this one focuses on the world of magazine publishing, and the rivalry between two magazines ― Trinity and Kunpo ― which results in a very energetic narrative that’s full of twists and turns, and plays very much like a comedic thriller, making this movie a really fun and entertaining experience, despite what may seem like a dry subject matter.

Do not miss this one, and thank me later.

BL Metamorphosis

From the slick entertainment of Kiba: The Fangs of Fiction, we go straight into the quiet beauty, which is typical of a lot of Japanese indie films, of BL Metamorphosis.

I admit that I’m nowhere near familiar with the world of manga comics, and I had to pause the movie and google what BL means to properly understand the subject matter of this film when I first watched it.

In short, BL (short for "boys’ love”) is a manga genre that involves the homoerotic relationship between male characters. The clever thing about this film is that it’s centred on the budding friendship between two female characters, one a teenager and the other a widowed old woman, over their shared love for BL comics, and how this friendship moves and changes them, for them to finally embrace the world and come out of their respective shells.

Single8

If you have any love for filmmaking, or at least films about filmmaking (like Spielberg’s previous film The Fabelmans, or comedies like Dolemite Is My Name, Son Of Rambow and Living In Oblivion), Single8 will have you swooning and singing its praises to anyone who would listen after you’ve finished watching it.

It is centred on two teenage best friends (who are still in high school) who fell in love with filmmaking after seeing Star Wars when it opened in Japan in 1978.

Armed with a Super 8 camera, their initial obsession of trying to recreate the Star Wars opening sequence with whatever rudimentary material they can gather soon blossoms into trying to make a short film for their school’s Cultural Festival.

Both a coming-of-age film as well as a love letter to filmmaking, this one’s a total delight from start to finish.

I Am What I Am

Another slightly older film from 2022, which also hasn’t made too much headway into the international market, this one will be of particular interest to fans of the Oscar winning film Drive My Car, as it stars Toko Miura, who plays the chauffeur in that internationally acclaimed film.

The unique hook of this film is that it is centred on a character who identifies as asexual or aromantic, meaning that she’s just not interested in sex and doesn’t have any romantic feelings towards any other person, and it explores the struggles and journey that she has to take to affirm herself as she navigates her way through a culture and society that might not find such concepts easy to understand and accept.

Not as entertaining as the three other movies above, but very much worth your time if the premise intrigues you.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.