The Consulate General of Japan and the High Museum will present a Japanese film festival every Saturday from March 6-20, 2010.

All screenings begin at 8:00 p.m. in Rich Theatre, Woodruff Arts Center, 1280 Peachtree Street NE, Atlanta, GA 30309. The Rich Theatre is located at 15^th and Peachtree Streets, next to the High Museum of Art at MARTA stop N-5.

Tickets are $7 general admission, $6 students, seniors, and Museum members. Patron level members enter free. To purchase tickets in advance, go to www.High.org, visit the Woodruff Arts Center Box Office, or call 404-733-5000. 

For more information about the film festival, contact the Consulate General of Japan at 404-365-9240 or info@cgjapanatlanta.org or visit http://www.atlanta.us.emb-japan.go.jp/filmfest2010.html.

Saturday, March 13, 2010

Directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa.  Starring Teruyuki Kagawa, Kyoko Koizumi, Yu Koyanagi, Kai Inowaki, Haruka Igawa, Kanji Tsuda, and Koji Yakusho.

Tokyo Sonata is a portrait of a seemingly ordinary Japanese family. The father who abruptly loses his job conceals the truth from his family; the eldest son in college hardly returns home; the youngest son furtively takes piano lessons without telling his parents; and the mother, who knows deep down that her role is to keep the family together, cannot find the will to do so. From the exterior, all is normal and the same. But somehow, a single, unforeseeable chasm has appeared within the family, threatening to disintegrate them. Director Kurosawa’s use of light and dark to express a sense of simultaneous hope and horror verges on awe-inspiring and the ending will leave you enthralled. Rated PG-13 for thematic elements and brief strong language.

“Tokyo Sonata takes on increasingly uncanny and timely resonance for an American audience.”
- Manohla Dargis, THE NEW YORK TIMES

“Begins as a well-behaved story and takes detours into the comic, the macabre and the sublime.”
- Roger Ebert, CHICAGO SUN-TIMES