52nd edition of New Directors/New Films
Festival&Award
Masao Adachi Takes a Passport Photo
Germany, France, Japan | 2026 | Documantary, Experimental | 27 min | Japanese
Director: Kamal Aljafari
Producer: Kamal Aljafari
Cinematographer: Neo Sora
Editor: Yannig Willmann
Sound: Takuya Kawakami
Starring: Masao Adachi
Festival Representation: Asia
Synopsis
In a quiet Tokyo studio, 87-year-old Japanese filmmaker Masao Adachi—passportless since his 1970s involvement with the revolutionary Japanese Red Army—poses for a passport photo that may take him nowhere, while the elderly widow who has run the small neighborhood shop for decades meticulously prepares the shot, at the mercy of her ancient, fiddly printer.
Shot by Neo Sora, Aljafari’s film traces the fragile persistence of memory and time and, like his 2025 feature With Hasan in Gaza, is a work of deadpan hilarity and a search for lost time.
Festival&Award
Toronto International Film Festival 2026
Wavelengths - Offcial Selection
New York Film Festival 2026
Spotlight Shorts - Offcial Selection
London Film Festival 2026
Experimenta - Offcial Selection
Director's Note
I met Masao Adachi in Tokyo, at a café called Sawa Sawa, run by Neo Sora and Aiko Masubuchi. During our conversation, he told me that he could no longer travel. On my last day in the city, while walking through the Nezu neighborhood, I passed a small photo studio run by an elderly woman. I decided to go in and have a passport photo taken. I felt that somehow I had to make a film there.
Once the film was ready, I asked Masao what he thought about the use of music. He replied, "It is not about the use of music. Rather, the music is the historical memory of this place."
Kamal Aljafari
Ben Rivers is a London-based British filmmaker, artist, and curator. Working primarily on 16mm film, his practice blurs the boundaries between fiction and documentary through a cinKamal Aljafari is a Palestinian filmmaker and artist known for his distinctive approach to cinema. Aljafari was also recently honored at Museo Nazionale del Cinema in Turin with a full retrospective of his work, as well as at Batalha Centro de Cinema in Porto and at the Ambulante Documentary Film Festival in Mexico City. His feature film A Fidai Film (2024) was shown in over 100 festivals and won around 10 international awards. His most recent work, With Hasan in Gaza (2025), premiered in the International Competition at Locarno Film Festival and was shortlisted for the European Film Academy.