ROTTERDAM, Netherlands — This year's International Film Festival of Rotterdam, which ran from Jan. 27 to Feb. 7, demonstrated the diversity of Japanese films to the European audience by featuring such guests as Kiju Yoshida, Masaki Iwana and Hirokazu Koreeda.

With Koreeda's Dutch premiere of "Air Doll" ("Kuki Ningyo"), the audience in the fully packed cinema was presented a dreamlike story about a blow-up doll coming to life.

"It is the first time I made a movie based on a 'manga' (comic book) . . . but I liked it a lot," Koreeda told the audience, referring to Yoshiie Gouda's "The Pneumatic Figure of a Girl."