Jazz Documentary 'Tokyo in 33 RPM' Heads to WAVES Film Bazaar

Director Tanmay Srivastava and Synergy Pictures U.K. will present their feature documentary "Tokyo in 33 RPM" at WAVES Film Bazaar, the market that runs alongside the International Film Festival of India in Goa.

The documentary surveys Tokyo's jazz scene through three overlapping worlds: working musicians, the owners of the city's jazz kissa — cafés built around listening to vinyl — and the collectors who have chronicled the music for decades. It also traces how jazz took root in Japan and how a new generation is reshaping it.

A first round of filming in Japan is complete, and the team has cut a short-form version from that material. A teaser is already out. Production returns to Tokyo April 1–22, 2027, for the final shoot, with completion targeted for June that year.

Who appears on camera?

The confirmed cast of subjects includes:

• Bassist Hino Kenji, known as Jino, whose father is trumpeter Hino Terumasa, Japan's best-known player of the instrument
• Lucas Minoru Poulshock, a musician who goes by Mino, hosts an Apple Music podcast and runs a listening bar
• Historian and record collector Hori Toru
• Gentle Forest Jazz Band and GCR Orchestra

The crew also films inside two venues: Masako, a Shimokitazawa jazz café now run by a third generation of the same family, and No Room for Squares, founded by Nakata Kohei.

"Tokyo is a city that never really slows down, but you can step into a small room where everyone has come for one reason: to listen," said Srivastava. "Outside those rooms, you meet musicians taking jazz in completely new directions. I wanted this film to bring both worlds together. That's the Tokyo I found most interesting."

Who is making it?

Srivastava produces alongside Sky Cheema and Jackson McKeever. Lucas Minoru Poulshock, Paul Adrian and Jade Kurian serve as executive producers. The production companies are Synergy Pictures U.K. and Double Drama Productions. McKeever's Lucky 18 joins as production partner, and Latakoo, a technology company based in Austin, Texas, acts as production and technology partner.

What does this change for audiences?

U.K. producer Cheema addressed the practical question directly: viewers need no background in jazz to connect with the film's subjects. "Some have spent their lives playing the music. Others have built places where people can hear it properly. What matters is how much of themselves they've put into it. That's what we want audiences to come away with," Cheema said.

That claim is easy to make before a film is finished; the completed feature will have to prove it. The announcement also leaves key details unstated — no budget figure, no distribution partner and no sales agent has been named, and the projected 2027 festival bow is described only as possible, not confirmed.

What is concrete is the schedule. The team is readying the feature for a potential international festival premiere in 2027, and the cameras head back to Tokyo in April.