Japanese Academy Awards Articles

Ken Watanabe, Tomokazu Miura in The Unbroken Setsuro Wakamatsu’s drama The Unbroken was voted the best Japanese film of 2009 at the Japanese Academy Awards ceremony, which was held in Tokyo on March 5. In the controversial drama, best actor winner Ken Watanabe plays an airline union leader fighting for stricter safety regulations following an air crash that left hundreds dead. Corporate corruption, however, gets [...]

Partial list of nominees & winners Picture of the Year: Villon’s Wife (Kichitaro Negishi) * The Unbroken (Setsuro Wakamatsu) Zero Focus (Isshin Inudo) The Summit: A Chronicle of Stones (Daisaku Kimura) Dear Doctor (Miwa Nishikawa) Outstanding Foreign Language Film * Gran Torino (Clint Eastwood) Slumdog Millionaire (Danny Boyle) The Changeling (Clint Eastwood) The Wrestler (Darren Aronofsky) Red Cliff – Part 2 (John Woo) Animation of [...]

Ken Watanabe in The Sun That Doesn't Set / The Unbroken (Shizumanu Taiyo) Setsurô Wakamatsu's The Unbroken, inspired by the 1985 airplane crash that killed 520 people in what remains Japan's worst airline disaster, is one of five films in the running for the Japanese Academy's Best Picture award. (See partial list of nominees below.) The film's star, Ken Watanabe, received a best actor nomination. [...]