Miike Takashi And Ogigami Naoko To Head Skip City Juries

With the behemoth that is Cannes now passed, festival season is well and truly upon us with the summer season packed full of more specialty, region focused and quirkier fare coming in to focus. And for those keeping an eye on Japan and the coming wave of young talent, that means it's coming time for Skip City.

The Japanese festival focuses on digitally produced cinema and while that distinction means less now than it used to, that focus means that throughout their history they've been less focused on flash and big budgets and more on young talent and inventive storytelling. And this year those young storytellers are going to have some big time names judging their work with the announcement that Ogigami Naoko will be serving as the head of the Japanese Films Competition with the iconinc Miike Takashi serving the same role for the International competition.

The full festival selection will be coming soon, but you can read this full announcement below.

The 16th anniversary edition of SKIP CITY INTERNATIONAL D-Cinema FESTIVAL will be held over 9 days from Saturday, July 13, to Sunday, July 21. The Festival was launched in 2004 as one of the world’s first film festivals to focus solely on films shot on digital in order to discover and nurture emerging talent. The Competition consists of the International Competition, and the Japanese Film Competition which has feature and short categories.

SKIP CITY INTERNATIONAL D-Cinema FESTIVAL introduced numerous new Japanese talents such as Kazuya Shiraishi (The Blood of Wolves), Ryota Nakano (A Long Goodbye), Yuichiro Sakashita (Pinkerton ni ainiiku), Shinichiro Ueda (One Cut of the Dead) and Shinzo Katayama (Siblings of the Cape).

President of the Jury for both International and Japanese Film Competitions announced!

Director Takashi Miike, whose latest film First Love was just screened in the Directors’ Fortnight section of the 72nd Cannes Film Festival, will be President of the Jury of the International Competition.

Director Naoko Ogigami, whose 2017 film Close-Knit received the Teddy Award (Special Jury Award) and Panorama Audience Award (Fiction Film - 2nd place) in the Panorama section of the 67th Berlin International Film Festival, will lead the Japanese Film Competition juries.

Please look forward to seeing which films will be discovered and awarded prizes by the jury members led by these two internationally-renowned directors. Please kindly cover this press release on your media outlets.

Lastly, the press conference with attendance of both Takashi Miike and Naoko Ogigami will be held on Friday, June 7, at the Todofuken Kaikan in Nagata-cho, Tokyo, to announce its full line-up. We look forward to seeing you there.

<Takashi MIIKE>

Born 1960 in Yao City, Osaka Prefecture, Miike has earned international critical acclaim for the body of his work. 13 Assassins (2010) competed at the Venice International Film Festival and Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai (2011) and Shield of Straw (2013) both competed at the Cannes Film Festival. He has more than 100 credits to his name and works in various genres and disciplines. His credits include the Crows Zero series (2007, 2009), Lessons of Evil (2012), The Mole Song: Undercover Agent Reiji series (2014, 2016), Laplace's Witch (2018) and many more.

<Naoko OGIGAMI>

Ogigami won the Deutsches Kinderhilfswerk - Special Mention Award at the Berlin International Film Festival with her debut feature film Barber Yoshino (2003). She established a new genre of Japanese cinema with Kamome Diner (2006), while Megane (2007) screened at the Sundance Film Festival and won the Manfred Salzgeber Award at the Berlin International Film Festival. Toilet (2010) won the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology's Art Encouragement Prize for New Artists and Rent-a-Cat (2012) screened in the Panorama section of the Berlin International Film Festival. Close-Knit (2017) won two awards at the Berlin International Film Festival. She has also written screenplays for an NHK BS Premium drama and “Rilakkuma and Kaoru” (TV / 2019) for Netflix and directed commercials.