‘Kontora’ Wins Inaugural Obayashi Prize At North America’s Largest Japanese Cinema Event Japan Cuts
Tom Grater International Film ReporterEXCLUSIVE: With the online edition of Japan Cuts, North America’s largest festival of contemporary Japanese cinema, set to draw to a close on Thursday (July 30), the event has crowned Kontora as the winner of its inaugural Obayashi Prize.Named after the late filmmaker Nobuhiko Obayashi, who died in April this year at the age of 82, the award was created to encourage the continued development of Japanese indie cinema through the festival’s Next Generation section and comes with a $3,000 prize.Anshul Chauhan’s Kontora topped a field that also included a further six emerging filmmakers and their titles: Natsuki Nakagawa’s Beyond the Night, Kana Yamada’s Life: Untitled, Takuya Misawa’s The Murders Of Oiso,