A FILM festival showcasing movies from Japan is being staged in Phnom Penh and Siem Reap as part of the Japanese Embassy’s promotion of  cultural exchanges with Cambodia.

All movies are free this Saturday and Sunday at Sorya Cinema on Norodom Boulevard, while Siem Reap viewers will get a chance to see the four films on March 6 and 7 at Bayon International Centre. Movies are dubbed in Khmer and subtitled in English.

The first movie to screen in the mini-festival is called Robocon, dealing with college contests to build robots.

The story starts with an aimless student named Satomi who accidentally enrolls in a college robot club. There are several clubs in her college – and one has always qualified to take part in the national contest. Her team, by contrast, is full of “dumb” members who have never won or even qualified to reach the first stage of a local contest. Robocon screens on Saturday, February 12, at 2pm.

First Love is a sentimental movie featuring a young girl whose mother has been given only months to live. Upset and depressed, Satoka starts looking for things to remember her mother by and finds a little music box with a sealed letter inside: written by her mother 24 years ago and addressed to Shinichiro Fujiki. Satoka tries to find Mr Fujiki to have him meet with her mother one last time. It will screen on Saturday, February 12, at 5pm.

Chibi Maruko Chan is an animated movie released in 1990. The plot concerns Maruko, who is a third-grade student who is friends and classmates with naughty boys Ono and Sugiyama. It screens on Sunday, February 13, at 2pm.

The final film in the festival is comedy Ghost Pub, featuring inn keeper Sotaro, who promises his wife Shizuko before she dies that he will never remarry. But soon after her death, he is pressured by his brother to consider an arranged marriage. It screens on Sunday, February 13, at 5pm.