Busan Film Festival Unveils 13-Film Japanese Animation Special: Masterpieces of Madness
The 31st Busan International Film Festival has unveiled a 13-film Japanese Animation Special titled "Masterpieces of Madness," spanning a century of the country's animation history. The program, billed as a Special Program in Focus, runs across the festival's dates of 6–15 October 2026 in Busan, South Korea, according to the festival's official press release (BIFF).
The headline draw is Rintaro, the veteran director behind Galaxy Express 999 (1979) and Metropolis (2001), who will travel to Busan for his first visit to Korea in 17 years. He is joined by four fellow directors: Kadowaki Kohei, Katanosaka Ryo, Natsume Shingo and Shinomiya Yoshitoshi (Variety).
Most of the films in the lineup have rarely played Korean cinemas, and several will receive their Korean premieres at the festival.
The program reaches back to 1958 for Yabushita Taiji's The White Snake Enchantress, the first Japanese animated feature made in full colour. The film adapts a Chinese folk tale about a young man who falls for a serpent capable of taking human form. A teenage Miyazaki Hayao — later the co-founder of Studio Ghibli — wrote in his collected essays Starting Point 1979–1996 that watching it left him in tears until dawn.
From 1973 comes Yamamoto Eiichi's Belladonna of Sadness, produced by Mushi Production as an experimental work aimed at adult viewers. Adapted from Jules Michelet's La Sorcière, it follows a woman named Jeanne who bargains with the Devil and becomes a witch. Actor Nakadai Tatsuya voices the Devil; Fukai Kuni handled art direction. The film screened at the 1973 Berlin Film Festival and became a global cult title after a 2016 4K restoration.
Tezuka Osamu appears twice in the lineup. Phoenix 2772 (Space Firebird) (1980) draws on his sprawling Phoenix manga saga, with Tezuka himself as writer and director. Its 12-minute opening traces the protagonist's growth using only music and imagery — no spoken dialogue at all. Metropolis (2001), directed by Rintaro from a screenplay by Otomo Katsuhiro, takes its story from a 1949 Tezuka manga. The film took five years to produce on a budget among the largest in Japanese animation history at that point.
Oshii Mamoru's Angel's Egg (1985), made with illustrator Yoshitaka Amano, unfolds with almost no dialogue, leaning on biblical symbolism and imagery. The approach laid groundwork for the visual style Oshii carried into Ghost in the Shell (1995), the cyberpunk landmark that helped define anime's international reputation.
Memories (1995), overseen by Otomo Katsuhiro of Akira fame, returns to Busan three decades after screening at the festival's first edition. The festival will show a 2025 remaster marking the film's 30th anniversary, presenting all three episodes of the omnibus.
Two debut features from the 2000s appear. Yuasa Masaaki's Mind Game (2004), his first film as director, adapts a manga by Robin Nishi. It won the Animation Division's Grand Prize at the 2005 Japan Media Arts Festival and the Mainichi Film Awards' 2004 Ofuji Noburo Award for Animation. Yuasa is also known for his work on the popular series Crayon Shin-chan and Chibi Maruko-chan. Morita Shuhei's debut, the 24-minute Kakurenbo (2004), built a cult following for pairing 3D computer graphics with cel-style rendering — an unusual combination for its era. Morita later earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Short Film for Possessions (2013) and directed Tokyo Ghoul (2014).
Four additional new titles round out the 13-film lineup. The full program details are available on the festival's site (BIFF).
For animation fans in Korea and across Asia, the program offers a rare chance to see formative works — many of them seldom screened outside Japan — on a festival big screen, with the directors who made them in the room.
