The 31st Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) has unveiled a 13-film Japanese Animation Special program, marking the first Korea visit in 17 years for animation master Rintaro alongside four next-generation directors. Billed as a Special Program in Focus, the lineup puts a spotlight on Japan’s animation history across a full century, mixing formative classics with buzzed-about new releases and one European work that shaped generations of Japanese animators. Most of the lineup has rarely played Korean theaters, and several titles will have their Korean premieres at the festival.
Rintaro will travel to Busan alongside directors Kadowaki Kohei, Katanosaka Ryo, Natsume Shingo and Shinomiya Yoshitoshi, who represent the medium’s newer generation. It is Rintaro’s first trip to Korea in 17 years. The lineup’s classics section opens with Yabushita Taiji’s “The White Snake Enchantress” (1958), an adaptation of a Chinese folk tale about a young man who falls for a serpent capable of taking human form.
It was the first Japanese animated feature made in full color, and it left a lasting impression on a teenage Miyazaki Hayao, who wrote in “Starting Point 1979-1996” that watching it left him in tears until dawn. The film stands as a landmark work from Toei Animation. Yamamoto Eiichi’s “Belladonna of Sadness” (1973) was produced by Mushi Production as an experimental work aimed at adult viewers.
Adapted from Jules Michelet’s “La Sorcière,” the story centers on Jeanne, a woman who strikes a bargain with the Devil and emerges transformed into a witch. The film was invited to screen at the 1973 Berlin Film Festival, shortly after its debut, and it later became a global cult title following a 2016 4K restoration. Actor Nakadai Tatsuya provides the Devil’s voice, while the camera drifts across static watercolor paintings under Fukai Kuni’s art direction.
Its 12-minute opening, which traces the protagonist’s growth using only music and imagery and no spoken dialogue, stands as one of the film’s most discussed passages. Oshii Mamoru’s “Angel’s Egg” (1985), made with illustrator Yoshitaka Amano, unfolds with almost no dialogue, relying instead on biblical symbolism and imagery. The film laid the groundwork for a visual approach Oshii carried forward into “Ghost in the Shell” (1995).
The program will show a 2025 remaster marking the film’s 30th anniversary, presenting all three episodes of the omnibus. Rintaro, whose credits include “Galaxy Express 999” (1979), directed the film, and Otomo Katsuhiro wrote the screenplay. Production took five years, with a budget among the largest in Japanese animation history at that point.
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