Tom Mes

Tom Mes was born in Rotterdam, Holland, in 1974. As a film critic he has contributed to publications that include Film Comment, Sight and Sound, Rue Morgue, De Filmkrant, Kateigaho and many others. He has provided liner notes and audio commentaries for numerous DVD releases of Japanese films around the world. He also has a background in animation as a scriptwriter and storyboard artist.

Tom is the author of the critically praised books Agitator: The Cinema of Takashi Miike, Iron Man: The Cinema of Shinya Tsukamoto and Re-Agitator: A Decade of Writing on Takashi Miike (all FAB Press). He co-authored The Midnight Eye Guide to New Japanese Film (Stone Bridge Press) with Jasper Sharp and Tokyolife: Art and Design (Rizzoli International) with Jasper Sharp and Ian Luna. Tom also contributed to books on Japanese and Asian cinema in the UK, France, Italy, Croatia, and Japan.

He is the translator of The Cinema and the Shoah (SUNY Press, co-translated with Anna Harrison), edited by Jean-Michel Frodon, and Night and Fog: A Film in History (University of Minnesote Press) by Sylvie Lindeperg. As a screenwriter Tom worked on Shinji Imaoka's pink musical Underwater Love (Onna no Kappa) and as an actor he can be seen in Kiki Sugino's Taksu (Yokudo).