Kasho IIZUKA

Born in 1990 in Gunma Prefecture, Kasho’s debut short film “Our Future”, inspired by his own experiences as a transgender man in Japan, won the Special Jury Prize at the Pia Film Festival and was highly acclaimed at international festivals. A winner of the Filmmex New Director Award in 2019, he directed his first commercial feature “The World for the Two of Us”, a story spanning a decade in the lives of transgender and cisgender people, which was widely released in Japan in 2022. He subsequently won the Most Promising New Talent Award at the 2022 Osaka Asian Film Festival with his feature film “Angry Son”. His latest film “Blue Boy Trial”, based on a true story about a trial over gender reassignment surgery in 1960s, premieres at the Tokyo International Film Festival before its Japanese theatrical release in November 2025. Kasho studied film under director Yoshitaro Negishi and screenwriter Masato Kato in college.