Last year, there was a real buzz, with about 500 spectators. “We hope to receive the same welcome this year,” assures Caroline Larroche, the association’s president. The entire casino will be decked out in Japanese colors, offering Japanese menus and snacks. The films, selected by the Kinotayo festival in Paris, were released in Japan in recent months and will be shown in their original version with French subtitles. Here are our picks among the fiction and documentaries.
1 “Rivers Returns”: a dive into the Japanese forests This fiction by Masakazu Kaneko was released in 2025. “Rivers Returns” takes place in the summer of 1958, in a rural Japanese village between a river and a forest, threatened by a typhoon. A young man named Yucha discovers the legend of Oyo, a young girl with a broken heart who supposedly drowned, during a kamishibai session (a form of traveling theater). The film navigates between ecological fable and ode to tolerance, where legend meets an intimate and personal quest. Screening on Friday, April 17th at 9 pm.
2 “The Last True Samurai”: the phenomenon of Japanese cinema Released in Japan in 2024, this fiction and comedy by Jun’ichi Yasuda was a big success in the Land of the Rising Sun. It will be released in France on June 10, 2026 for the general public. Also selected by the Kinotayo festival, “The Last True Samurai” will be premiered in Fouras on Saturday, April 18th at 9:15 pm. Playing with different eras, a samurai from the Edo period (17th – 19th centuries) is struck by lightning in Kyoto. When he wakes up in contemporary Japan, he is mistaken for a movie extra and finds himself on the film set.
3 “Numakage Public Pool”: a window into Tokyo’s suburb This documentary by Shingo Ota is set in Numakage, a suburb of Tokyo, where a municipal pool, open for 52 years, is due to be demolished and replaced by a school. This place, so dear to its swimmers and staff, was once “the ocean of a city without an ocean.” Approaching its closure, the Japanese director decides to capture the pool’s final moments of life and the heartbreaking farewells of its regulars. A collection of unique stories delivering a strong political message. Saturday, April 18th at 5:30 pm.
A demonstration of Ikebana (Japanese floral art) will also be offered on Sunday, April 19th at 3 pm at the Casino. The full program can be found on its website.
