Kon Satoshi Birthday Festival 2026

Kon Satoshi directed four feature films and one television series before his death in 2010. This festival shows all of them again in October, the month he was born, at two cinemas in Tokyo run by the same company. The screenings are held at Ikebukuro HUMAX Cinemas, apart from the one on the final day, which is at Shibuya HUMAX Cinema.

A pop-up shop runs at both cinemas for five weeks, selling shirts and other goods made for the festival, and drinks named after the films.

1,700 yen for a screening on its own. The three screenings that carry a talk cost 3,500 yen each, the same price for all three. No discounts or free admissions apply. Tickets are sold online through each cinema's own booking pages, date by date, with a presale for members the evening before general sale opens on 12 September. The box offices sell from the same day, but only what has not gone online.

The films

Perfect Blue, his first film as director, came out in 1998 and was taken abroad as the first animated psychological thriller of its kind. Millennium Actress followed in 2002 and Tokyo Godfathers in 2003, and Paprika, his last completed film, in 2006. Between them he made the television series Paranoia Agent, in 2004.

All five are shown across the three days. Paranoia Agent is run through in one sitting overnight, from the Blu-ray. The films are shown from 4K restorations, though both cinemas project at 2K. Paprika is kept for the last day, which is Kon's birthday. They are screened in Japanese.

The talks

Three of the screenings carry a talk before or after them, given by people who worked on the films. Among those announced are the actor who voiced the singer at the centre of Perfect Blue, the writer of its screenplay, the two actors from Paranoia Agent, and the actor who voiced Paprika herself. The talks are given in Japanese.

Kon Satoshi

He was born in Hokkaido in 1963 and studied visual communication design at Musashino Art University. He began as a manga artist, winning a prize in his student days, and moved into animation from 1990, working on backgrounds and layout before directing. He died in 2010 of pancreatic cancer, at forty-six.