#HandballStrive

In the organizer's words:

#ハンド全力 Hasshutagu hando zenryoku

Director: MATSUI Daigo
2020, 108 minutes, OmeU, Streaming

What are your goals? asks one of Masao's classmates. Handball player Masao is about to graduate, but he stopped playing handball after the Kumamoto earthquake. But when an old photo of him suddenly goes viral, he wonders if the small group of players, which includes his good friend Okamoto, has what it takes to rehabilitate their flagging handball team. Can their sudden internet fame give Masao what he has lost: a purpose in life?

Film series
JFF Theater
Films from the Japanese Film Festival as guests in Cologne

Japanese cinema has long enjoyed great popularity outside Japan and the number of its fans has grown steadily. In Germany, too, numerous historical and current productions from Japan are presented at festivals, retrospectives and special programs.

In response to this development, the Japan Foundation launched the Japanese Film Festival (JFF) in 2016 in addition to its existing film program. This on-site project was intended to promote Japanese films worldwide and was initially aimed at the ten ASEAN countries and Australia under the motto "Japanese Film Anytime, Anywhere" and later also at countries such as Brazil, China and India.

In 2020, the Japan Foundation launched the Japanese Film Festival Online (JFF Online), an online streaming program designed to bring the diversity and quality of Japanese films closer to audiences around the world during the COVID-19 pandemic. In a special edition in 2022/2023 titled JFF+ INDEPENDENT CINEMA, the online program focused on Japanese independent films selected by the directors of Japanese independent cinemas ("Mini Theater").

After the overwhelming success of JFF Online - the films were viewed more than 650,000 times in more than 130 countries - the Japan Foundation finally launched the online streaming platform JFF Theater in August 2024. Under the motto "Moved, Touched & Inspired", a certain number of films and videos are made available with multilingual subtitles. In principle, the films can be accessed anytime and anywhere free of charge, but access restrictions apply to some titles depending on availability and rights.

The range of films on offer extends from famous classics and current feature films to anime and documentaries, supplemented by numerous background stories and interviews. The path to movie enjoyment is simple: after registering for free, you click on the desired film and can go on a journey of discovery.

In the new season, which runs from October 31, 2025 to February 3, 2026, the JFF Theater is providing eight films that are not only available online, but will also be shown once each in November and December on the screen of the Japanese Cultural Institute. The screening dates and film descriptions can be found at the bottom of this page

The films in the first four screenings tell humorous stories about the lives of schoolchildren and young people (OmeU). The films in the second part of the series are all about Japanese cuisine and the Japanese lifestyle (OmdU).

To the JFF Theater website