Category: Festivals

Burn (炎上, Makoto Nagahisa, 2026)

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“You may not be okay, but neither is anyone else,” a well-meaning young woman advises neatly encapsulating the world of the Toyoko kids in Makoto Nagahisa’s second feature, Burn (炎上, Enjo). A little less anarchic than his debut We Are Little Zombies, the film is one of several exploring the fate of these displaced teens the media has often liked to demonise as means of deflecting the fact that society has largely failed them and the adults who should be helping often only make things worse.

This contrast is clear in the opening scenes in which Jurie’s (Nana Mori) Christian parents sing a hymn about the world being full of light, but Jurie’s father (Kanji Furutachi) is a crazed authoritarian who beats her and her sister with a belt while insisting that Jurie’s persistent stammer is a reflection of her “tainted soul”. Ironically, asking her sister if she believes in God, Jurie starts to pray for her father’s death. “If God exists, He took his fucking time,” she quips when her father finally drops dead a few years later. But the abuse doesn’t end. Her mother takes her father’s place and begins to beat them just as she was beaten. 

Shinjuku, is one sense, a place full of light given its brightness and shining signs, but in the real world you can’t have light without shadow. After running away, Jurie is taken in by a community of similarly displaced teens led by an adult Fagin-like character known as Kami (Wataru Ichinose), which is ironically the same as the word for “God”. He describes himself as a guardian angel who whose job it is to make everyone feel safe, yet there’s something disingenuous about his warm-hearted claims that this is a place that accepts everyone and that no matter what society may choose to reject, he is glad that they were born. His golden fangs seem to hint at something cruel and greedy echoed in his reluctance to left Jurie leave, insisting that she won’t make it in the real world despite having told her she needs to become independent.

Mitsuba (Aoi Yamada), who has a disability stemming from a traumatic childhood incident, similarly finds her attempt to find escape through a relationship with a host foundering. Ironically named “Hikari” which means light, he justifies himself to her in insisting that he’s a victim too having been abused by his mother as a child, though in the end Mitsuba’s need to be loved can only be satisfied transactionally as she deludes herself into thinking her relationship with Hikari is “real” even as he continues to exploit her. To earn the money pay him, she ironically takes to sex work and encourages Jurie to join her in an effort to earn a million yen and then go back to save her sister. One of their clients presents them with a strange-looking dildo that sort of resembles a wand used by magical girls in anime which they wave as though transforming, but later describe themselves as performing an exorcism after meeting clients.

The men that buy their services are just another symptom of an exploitative society. When Jurie almost overdoses and is taken to hospital, the police don’t send her back to her family but do place her in a childcare facility where she feels imprisoned. The implication is that society would rather hide these children away rather than attempt to help them. Jurie longs for the freedom of the city and escapes to return, but in the end discovers only darkness. The film shares its Japanese title with Kon Ichikawa’s adaptation of Mishima’s The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, Conflagration, which is also about a young man who decided to burn it all down in protest against a profane world, though Jurie seeks escape from the collective punishment of the contemporary society along with the traumatic legacy of her father’s abuse. Nagahisa mixes iPhone social media footage capturing the kids’ world from their perspective with dreamlike imagery and a video game aesthetic as Jurie looks for a way out of the labyrinth of her trauma while setting the world ablaze in her mind. What she discovers in the ashes, however, maybe a renewed hope for the future and the possibility of a different kind of salvation.

Burn screens as part of this year’s JAPAN CUTS.

Trailer (Engliish subtitles)

Unidentified Murder (UFO離奇命案, Kwok Ka-Hei & Jack Lee Chun-Kit, 2025)

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The line between a prank and a scam maybe be necessarily thin in Kwok Ka-Hei and Jack Lee Chun-Kit farcical comedy Unidentified Murder (UFO離奇命案) in which nothing is quite as it first seems. Unfolding with an almost Rashomon-like structure, the film slowly peels back the layers of reality to reveal that pretty much everyone is playing a trick on someone, sometimes rooted in a childish sense of fun, but equally a desire for attention and the money that can be generated from it in today’s attention-obsessed society.

Twenty-five years ago, Kit (Ronald Lam Tsz-Kit) and Mark (Ling Man-lung) went up the mountain with their friend Ho but returned alone. Ho’s disappearance has apparently become a legendary local mystery with the boys claiming that Ho was abducted by aliens, though some seem to believe that their story is either a trauma-born fiction or a deliberate attempt to disguise their role in whatever may have happened to their friend. In any case, the film opens with an attempt by online content creator Man (Renci Yeung) of the “Prank My Boyfriend” video channel to play a trick on her boyfriend Mark by getting an actor, Kim (Peter Chan Charm-Man), to be the retuned Ho abruptly released by the aliens after 25 years. To begin with, this doesn’t seem like a very funny prank and could be crushingly insensitive. One might assume the now middle-aged men are carrying a degree of trauma about the failure to protect their friend, or else if they really were responsible for his disappearance in someway, it could turn out of be a dangerous situation for everyone. 

Nevertheless, Mark doesn’t seem to be particularly phased by Man’s prank and, on fact, sets out of prank her back by getting Kim onside to pretend that he and Kit kill him while planning to move Ho’s body due to the increased interest generated by the incident’s 25th birthday. This doesn’t seem like a very funny prank either, and it’s difficult to deny that this ultimately farcical situation began with a series of very bad decisions especially as this particular stunt is intended to work up to a marriage proposal. Unfortunately, however, nothing goes to plan and when it looks like Kim might be dead for real, the gang get a mysterious text trying to blackmail them threatening to release Man’s video of them murdering Kim online.

Or course, there’s a possibility that this is another prank too, or, to be frank, more of a scam. In this world, nothing really is certain and no one is really who they seem to be. A good friend might be playing a trick on you that could unwittingly be hurtful or insensitive though they may not mean it, while likewise they may be trying to con you out of a bit money to fight their own desperate circumstances. There’s a kind of childishness that underplays most of the trickery like a lie told by a child to get out of trouble that they then have to commit to for the rest of their lives. In this way a trick can become a shared secret, like an alternate reality that binds people together in ways few other things can. Others my be wilfully deceived by watching things like the Stardust Memories channel that purports to show evidence of aliens but may not be completely on the level. To that extent, at least Man’s channel is honest about its intentions even if it’s not clear to what extent Mark is already in on the joke.

Even if you regard it as harmless fun, these pranks too could wind up having devastating consequences and escalating to levels of death and violence all based on a series of misunderstandings. So confusing do things become while out in the mountain forest that Man even tries to grab the gun from a policeman and points it at her friends certain that they’re pranking her only to be shocked when the gun later goes off. But what could have unraveled a long-time mystery and exposed things best left buried or resulted in deadly consequences instead becomes another bonding exercise in which a group of people generate an unexpected friendship though all being in on the joke, each letting the incident end with good humour and no harm done. Filled with farcical comedy and an ironic cynicism the film seems to say that in this world where everything is grift being in on joke might be the only thing that makes life worth living.

Unidentified Murder screens as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Magical Secret Tour (マジカル・シークレット・ツアー, Chihiro Amano, 2026)

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When her husband falls into a coma and she discovers he’s left them in huge amounts of debt due to an undisclosed gambling problem, an ordinary housewife finds herself at the mercy of an already strained society in which it seems everyone is struggling to the extent that they have no capacity to listen to other people’s troubles. Inspired by a real-life case in which a group of women was arrested for smuggling gold into the country in 2017, Chihiro Amano’s lighthearted crime drama Magical Secret Tour (マジカル・シークレット・ツアー) is a condemnation both of a society ruled by money and the various ways that women are still expected to clear up the messes of irresponsible men.

Wakako (Kasumi Arimura) is quickly made to feel guilty for not having noticed anything wrong with her husband or their family finances while also expected to shoulder the burden of the repayment plan to his former employer to cover the money he embezzled on top of his hospital fees which must now be paid in full because he was unemployed and had no insurance. When she tries to turn for her own family for her help, her mother is not happy to see her and seems put out that she’s turned up unexpectedly. It seems their family garage business is in trouble while they are already under strain due to needing to pay for their bedridden grandfather’s medical treatment. Her mother leaves abruptly before Wakako has the chance to explain the situation denying her the possibility of both financial assistance and emotional support. 

Apparently ineligible for any kind of government assistance, Wakako’s attempts at job-hunting fail because she is a mother of two with one only an infant and has also been out of the workforce for too long for any career experience to count. Even when her husband does eventually make a partial recovery, he blasts her for neglecting her responsibilities and overburdening his mother by asking for help with childcare. Despite having let her down so badly, he insists he’ll get a job once he’s better and discourages her from continuing to work even though she tells him that she enjoys it and finds it fulfilling. To that extent, her experiences have shown her that she did not really need to be dependent on a man for money as society somewhat encouraged her to be and could also look for fulfilment outside the home as an independent woman. 

Nevertheless, the only work she can find means turning to criminality, first by agreeing to a loan shark’s dodgy gold-smuggling scheme by taking the kids to Singapore for a few days and then returning laden down by gold bars they smuggle through customs to avoid importation taxes. While there she meets two other women in similar situations. Kiyoe (Haru Kuroki) is a scientific researcher in her early 40s who faces persistent sexism at work where her boss steals credit for her discoveries and faces no consequences for fiddling his expenses. Unable to find a new position thanks to a poor publication history, she wants the money to provide for her future. Mayu (Sara Minami), meanwhile, is trying to escape her toxic mother while pregnant herself and working as a bar hostess. 

The women justify themselves that what they’re doing is basically a victimless crime and just really a bit sneaky rather than morally wrong even if aware it’s illegal. A disclaimer at the end of the film implies the law has been tightened since 2017, but the stakes are also fairly low as it seems they’d mostly likely just be asked to pay the tax if they got caught, so trying to smuggle it seems like a no-brainer to them. Even so, the film skirts around Wakako’s involvement with the criminal gang from whom one would expect some sort of payback after she runs off with some of their gold after her own attempt to run a similar business inevitably runs into trouble. Instead it focuses on her sense of isolation in which the mother can end up being pushed out of both families, disregarded and taken for granted while expected to pick up her husband’s slack even if he hasn’t kept his part of the bargain by providing financial stability while otherwise absent from the domestic space. The only way to make a man play his part in child-rearing might ironically be divorce, though it seems likely it might just be him overburdening his mother this time. In any case, Wakako’s magical secret tour does seem to have led her to a more fulfilling place even it may in other ways be bittersweet. 

Magical Secret Tour screens as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Hallan (한란, Ha Myung-mi, 2025)

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Jeju Island had been at the forefront of the resistance to the Japanese during the colonial era and its transition into the new post-war reality had been more orderly than that of the mainland. Nevertheless, the Korea’s sovreingity had not been returned and the South remained under the governance of the occupying American military while the North was controlled by the Soviet Union. Many on the island objected to the proposed elections which were to take place in South only, fearing that it would lead to permanent division of the nation. Once police fired on protestors making the anniversary of the protest movement, an armed conflict arose between guerrilla fighters who took to the mountains and the police and military backed by the extreme right-wing Northwest Youth League that had been dispatched from the mainland to suppress the rebellion.

Ten percent of the island’s population are said to have died during the massacre, with many more fleeing to North Korea or Japan, though the events were suppressed during the long years of military dictatorships with their history little known. Ha Myung-mi’s Hallan (한란) aims to shed light on these historical events by following a collection of ordinary villagers whose peaceful lives are disrupted by a political conflict that some feel to be very distant and not particularly anything to do with them. To that extent, the film aims for a kind of political neutrality in which it depicts the South Korean soldiers and insurrectionists as little different from other. Sergeant Park is a crazed sadist who is drunk on his own power and obsessed with rooting out “commies”, while Jeongnam  is a paranoid authoritarian. Each of them kill members of their own side with little hesitation. Sergeant Park executes a local soldier who advised a collection of elderly people coming down from the mountain in response to a pamphlet promising their lives would be spared if they surrendered, that they shouldn’t trust the military and would be better to remain in hiding. Jeongnam kills a comrade who wants to look for his family fearing he will expose their plan to blow up an army base with dynamite left behind by the Japanese. The only innocents are the apolitical villagers who are caught between the two. 

But in characterising the rebels in this way, the film leans towards favouring the authorities if while denouncing their conduct and subtly implicating the American occupation forces for tacitly backing them. The only source of resistance comes from a conflicted Christian soldier who is racked with guilt over what he’s been asked to do, but still asks God to help him detect communists which suggests he does not necessarily think this actually wrong if the right people are being targeted. Rooting the resistance in faith further muddies the waters and perhaps just introduces a third source of potential authoritarism in the presence of organised religion, while simultaneously adding a subtly anti-communist sentiment.

Conversely, the presence of the village’s shamaness adds a slightly less problematic voice of moral authority as she does her best to protect the villagers while staying behind to fulfil her role in service to the gods. Much of the film focuses on a little girl, Hae-sang, trying to find her mother in the mountains after surviving the massacre in her village conducted in retaliation for losses on the army’s side. That she becomes mute after witnessing so much trauma mimics the way in which these events have been suppressed and continue to haunt the island into the present day. Hae-sang’s mother Ajin had wanted a “better world” for her in which she could be educated and wouldn’t necessarily be left with no other option than to be a diver like she was, though the film’s melancholy conclusion largely renders this desire along with the idea of Hae-seng has a historical witness rather moot. Nevertheless, the film takes it’s title from a local wild plant sprouting all over the mountain that comes to stand in for the local people whom the authorities may have attempted to ruthlessly weed out but instead have endured and grown stronger in the face of hardship and adversity.

Hallan screens as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.

Trailer (Korean subtitles only)

HIGUMA!! The Killer Bear (ヒグマ!!, Eisuke Naito, 2025)

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Last year Japanese society was sent into an existential panic due to a severe increase in the number of bear attacks as the creatures were forced to venture beyond their natural habitat due to climate change and the impacts of human behaviour on the rural environment. Eisuke Naito’s Higuma!! The Killer Bear (ヒグマ!!) then arrives at an apt time, though in this case, the bear seems to symbolise something else acting as a kind of karmic supernatural entity attacking those encroaching on its territory while drawn away from the safety of the city by greed and desperation.

The cities are, it seems, in quite a bad way. Eighteen-year-old Sora (Fuku Suzuki) is an aspiring game developer, though the complaints that his retro 3D-platformer is too hard with janky character design might equally apply to the challenges of modern life. He’s just got into university, but his happiness is short-lived as his father takes his own life shortly afterward having been scammed out of all his savings and therefore unable to pay his son’s tuition fees. While his mother tries to make the best of the situation and insists she’ll figure something out so he can continue with his education, Sora is resentful and angry until unwisely agreeing to a shady job ad promising a large amount of money for delivering “an envelope” to an unspecified location. It’s after this that he’s plunged into a confusing world of backstreet crime, scams, and exploitation that he cannot otherwise escape.

Yet at the same time, this otherworld feels oddly like a video game and is often framed like an old-school arcade scroller, classic first-person shooter, or RPG as Sora is dragged further into this morally compromised sector of society. After being witness to his boss scamming an old lady out of her cash card and ink stamp, he’s charged with retrieving a precious gem from an agent turned rogue that looks a bit like a rupee from the world of Zelda and feels like a video game MacGuffin. The young woman, a former SDF member, decided to keep it for herself having been offered only 30,000 yen to steal it though it’s apparently worth ten million. It turns out that she’s a kind of victim too. Not only was she kicked out of the SDF for punching a superior officer who was sexually harassing her, but has become hooked on a live-streaming host and fallen into financial ruin. This has become such a common problem lately that legislation has been introduced specifically to stop hosts exploiting women and forcing them into sex work. Though Wakabayashi (Wan Marui) knows intellectually that this relationship is entirely one-sided and not actually real, she feels compelled to keep supporting him in part because he was the only person who listened to her worries and accepted her as she was even though she knows this is just part of his job.

That her desire for connection and acceptance can only be fulfilled through a transactional arrangement speaks of an increasing sense of disconnection and alienation just as Sora is dragged into this hellish world through an online ad, never having met his handler who goes by the ironic handle of “Angel”. It’s the need to get rid of Wakabayashi that forces the gang out of their natural habitat and into the bear’s territory of the forest where the human civility that marks urbanity is largely dissolved. Yet there’s a sense of human solidarity that emerges between Sora and Wakabayashi in which they call each other by their own names as they try to battle the bear even if they also give in to their greed by staying in the mountains longer than they need to in order to retrieve the gemstone which the bear has swallowed.

Another kind of human connection is brokered by Sora’s interaction with a young boy who is playing the game he designed. The boy has been told not to talk to strangers or his games will be taken away, but decides to trust Sora and ironically gives him some bear-shaped snacks. He ends up fulfilling the role of a wizard in an RPG, gifting Sora some much needed special items after he manages to beat his own game. This newfound senes of achievement allows Sora to regroup and decide to do the right thing, not only calling his mother to explain what’s going on honestly, but going back to confront the bear and save Wakabayashi. On his way back to the mountain, he passes a collection of elderly people who are running an anti-scammer drill which seems to be organised much like the bear catching drills being run various cities, only in that case, Sora would also be a kind of bear. Filled with darkly absurd humour, the film seems to say man is the most deadly predator and the cities are the place of real danger, but allows Sora to overcome his sense of despair in using his unique and specialist knowledge along with a sense of human solidarity to finally beat back the existential threats of an exploitative society. 

HIGUMA!! The Killer Bear screens as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Vicissitude (郷, Takuro Ijichi, 2024)

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A dejected young man finds himself pondering lost wonder amid the vicissitudes of life in Takuro Ijichi’s poetic debut feature. Drawing inspiration from Terence Malik, the film finds a sense of awe and serenity in the natural landscape that contrasts with the demands of a modern, more urban way of life with its resulting pressures that leave the hero, Gaku, floundering without direction in the wake of the implosion of his baseball playing dreams.

Indeed, baseball becomes a kind of metaphor as Gaku finds himself running in an endless loop. This first chapter titled competition itself at first seems to be a lost paradise from which Gaku is unexpectedly expelled. After showing some potential as a high school baseball player, Gaku’s determination to turn pro is ridiculed by teachers as childish and unrealistic. While he devotes himself to perfecting his craft at the expense of human relationships such as his connection with female classmate Saki, his less than friendly rivalry with another boy spills over into spite and resentment. When he is deliberately injured, Gaku at first tries to hide it, but then faces both disappointment and humiliation in being kicked off the team ending his baseball playing dreams for good.

It’s at this point that Gaku begins to idealise his rural childhood and friendship with another local boy, Ryu. Largely left to their own devices the pair play in the fields and forests and bask in a sense of wonder for the natural world. At first they float paper boats, then take to a real one to ride the waves of a local lake. Conversations with his elderly grandmother about the war lend the place a sense of history and continuity as Gaku finally turns back to nature to ask himself where it is that he belongs. He tries to find his way back and reclaim something that he’s lost while battling uncertainty. Yet this bygone world seems slightly outside of his reach, lent an elegiac quality by Ijichi’s wistful cinematography and melancholic score.

The early death of a fellow baseball team player in an accident similarly reinforces the themes of transience and impermanence, reminding Gaku that his life is short and fleeting. Yet his constant circling of the baseball field is not a futile effort so much as a training ground for life in which he figures out what it is he’s running towards and eventually discovers the courage to chase it. He reflects that the people around him and the town may have changed, yet his homeland remains the same lending him the sense of certainty he’d been missing in a solid foundation to his life. 

These realisations are echoed in the film’s non-linear structure in which Gaku is thrown back to his childhood memories while contemplating his current sense of confusion and emptiness in the present. He asks himself if having all the answers is really necessary in life while actively looking for them inside his past. The conclusion he may come to is that it isn’t, really. Life is an ongoing process or a kind of evolution that doesn’t so much lead towards a kind of solution as being one in and of itself. What becomes important is accepting its vicissitudes and learning to savour each moment while reassessing what’s important, such as human relationships and the sense of joy and wonder to be found in the natural world.

Playing out more as a tone poem, Ijichi is content to let the narrative drift on the waves of time, as he puts it, focusing more on images of transience such as flowing water, rolling waves, and floating clouds that reflect a sense of perpetual loss echoing Gaku’s inner turmoil. Nevertheless, it’s within the natural environment that Gaku begins to find the answers he’s looking for that give him a sense of direction in his life and the courage to embrace it in all of its tragedy, absurdity, joy and sorrow. 

Vicissitude screens as part of this year’s Toronto Japanese Film Festival.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Climbing for Life (てっぺんの向こうにあなたがいる, Junji Sakamoto, 2025)

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A world-famous, record-breaking mountain climber faces the final ascent in Junji Sakamoto’s fictionalised biopic of Junko Tabei, the first Japanese woman to reach the summit of Everest. Here named Tabe, the highest mountain Junko (Sayuri Yoshinaga / Non) has to climb seems to be the patriarchal nature of Japanese society in the 1970s. The film does, however, mistakenly imply that sexism is an issue that has now been solved in the film’s contemporary setting of 2010-16 in which women hold positions of authority and are free to fulfil themselves outside the home on an equal footing with men.

Of course, this is not really the reality even if, in some ways, the situation may be much better than during the high prosperity era during which Junko was a trailblazer in more ways than one. When she decides to mount an all-female expedition team to conquer Everest, she’s mainly met with derision and scorn. While she and female reporter Etsuko (Yuki Amami / Mizuki Kayashima) do the rounds of various companies looking for sponsorship, the elderly male CEOs are incredibly confused and accuse them of being traitors to their sex. They questions whether it’s safe for women to do something like this without any men around (though in the interests of clarity, all the Sherpas appear to me male), and also what wonder what their husbands are supposed to do for the six months they’ll be away shirking their domestic responsibilities. Even when they encounter a man who is closer to their own generation and sounds supportive, stating that the era of gender equality has arrived, it turns out to be all talk. He does not take their proposal seriously and even asks which part of it he should read as if it wasn’t really important. In the end, his “support” doesn’t transfer into any investment.

In the present day, Etsuko remarks that there were a lot of useless men around back then, as if men are universally different now. She herself has become a senior reporter and is in a position of authority over younger male reporters in the newsroom. Likewise, Junko’s main physician in the later stages of her treatment following a cancer diagnosis is also female and makes a point of listening to her patient’s wishes and concerns. It does not appear that Etsuko ever married or had children, but no one of is critical of them for “abandoning” their domestic responsibilities to pursue a career in the way they were of Junko when she left her daughter behind to climb Everest. To that extent the film paints a rosier picture of the contemporary society than might actually be the case given the still persistent levels of sexism and gender bias that still present barriers to woman’s ability to find fulfilment whether within the domestic environment or outside of it.

Nevertheless, Junko’s husband Masaaki (Kôichi Sato) is depicted as a shining example of confident masculinity in his support for his wife’s endeavours. A sister-in-law looks after daughter Noriko during the day with Masaaki on parental duties outside of his shifts as a mechanic. Even so, Junko’s success is seen to have a negative effect on her children who do feel a degree of resentment towards her. Noriko has largely taken it in her stride, but also feels a sense of regret that Junko is not just her mother but someone she has to share with the world. When this spurs her on to deepen their relationship in adulthood, younger son Shintaro (Ryuya Wakaba) who was born after Everest is hugely resentful and struggles to emerge from his mother’s shadow or the pressure of being the child of a famous person. He doesn’t like it that people have expectations of him because of who his mother is and feels as if he is held to a different standard because of it, causing him to become rebellious at school. The situation becomes so bad that he eventually moves in with relatives and transfers to the relatively more anonymous Fukushima where his teacher gives him some harsh lessons in humility, reminding him that he is not “Junko’s Tabe’s son”, but that Junko Tabe just happens to be his mother.

Shintaro’s views also seem to be more patriarchal than those of his father whom he verbally attacks insisting that he must also be resentful of Junko and that if it were not for losing his big toes to frostbite it would have been him conquering Everest, not her. While Shintaro appears to feel emasculated by his mother and looks down on his father for what he sees as weakness, Shintaro is able to put his personal frustrations aside and devote himself wholeheartedly to supporting Junko. It’s not until Junko’s illness becomes serious that Shintaro is able to reconcile with her and find a more stable path in life through helping with her programme to bring high school students displaced by the 2011 earthquake to climb Mount Fuji.

Mountains take on an almost sacred presence for Junko with Mount Fuji in particular becoming a constant motif. The film depicts her final battle with cancer as being yet another mountain to climb, though knowing your limitations is also part of the art of climbing and so when she comes to the realisation that she can no longer reach the summit, she decides to plan her descent. The poignant closing moments have her looking at a photo of the women’s team and insisting they will all go together, expressing a degree of sadness that the group fell apart after Everest with some resentful that Junko had progressed to the summit alone rather than postpone to regroup to call off the ascent to try again another time. All of the press attention fell on her alone forgetting the efforts of those who’d stayed at base camp and without whom Junko’s success would not have been possible. Female solidarity is also vulnerable to these kinds of pressures, the film implies, though Junko’s friendship with Etsuko endures right to the end. Though the conclusion is bittersweet, the closing moments at least focus more on a life well lived amid the majesty of the mountains rather than dwelling on its inevitable tragedy.

Climbing for Life screens as part of this year’s Toronto Japanese Film Festival.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Tokyo Strayers (東京逃避行, Ren Akiba, 2026)

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Amid increasing gentrification of urban centres, where are the kids supposed to go? Ren Akiba’s Tokyo Strayers (東京逃避行, Tokyo Tohiko) seems to suggest efforts to clean up Kabukicho haven’t actually been all that successful, while young and impressionable people for whom home is not or safe place or who feel themselves to be out of place in their hometown continue to flock to the city in search of a kind of grimy glamour that promises freedom in a conformist society.

At least, that’s why Asuka ends up in Shinjuku while in flight from a policeman father she resents for leaving their family for a younger woman. In truth, Asuka’s problems are more of the normal teenage variety and otherwise she appears to come from a more stable, financially comfortable home with parents that are invested in her welfare even if she finds them to be overbearing. The same is not true for many of the other runaways including Hiyori left home away after experiencing physical and sexual abuse at the hands of her father. It’s Hiyori who is currently writing the Tokyo Strayers blog that’s attracted Asuka and countless other young women to this hip and happening place, though it soon becomes clear that the diary is an idealised vision of Shinjuku life that doesn’t really exist.

The film seems to present two young men, Edo and Merio, as the angel and demon of Shinjuku. Edo runs a kind of shelter for runaway teens that provides a safe space for them where they can find food and start to rebuild their lives. Merio, meanwhile, gets young women hooked on drugs in order to sexually exploit them. The distinction between them would seem to be black and white, but in reality the two were once a team and Merio apparently only started working with a local drug dealer in order to get money to fund Edo’s sanctuary, which Edo eventually accepted, if unwillingly. In any case, Edo started the sanctuary with money he made as a host working in Kabukicho which means that it still arises from the sleazy underbelly of the red light district which is built upon the exploitation of women. 

Nevertheless, Edo is committed to keeping runaway kids safe, which is why he tells Hiyori to make sure Asuka gets home safely knowing that she likely means to sell her to Merio in exchange for drugs. Hiyori is only really doing this because she feels she has no other means of survival and the implication is that she began doing sex work as a kind of self-harm intended to wipe out the abuse she received at the hands of her father. Edo warns his runaways to avoid going out because of the increased police presence given that they will just send anyone they catch back home without considering whether that might be a safe environment for them. A policewoman later confesses her regrets about sending a girl back to her family thinking it was for the best and they’d patch things up over time only for the girl to take her own life shortly afterward. The film is then implicitly critical of an unthinking adult world that is failing to protect these children. Even if they try to report what’s happening to them, they are not believed or no action is taken because of a reluctance to interfere in domestic matters and an unshakeable belief in the sanctity of family. 

But this environment is obviously no good for them either, leaving them open to exploitation or falling into criminal activity as a means of supporting themselves. Edo’s initiative is one way of fighting back through youth solidarity, but it’s also rooted in the dark side of Kabukicho given the impossibility of running such an establishment without any kind of funding. Akiba seems to want to show the two sides of Kabuki, one seemingly glamorous and alluring, and the other seedy and depressing, while suggesting that the only real source of solidarity exists among the young people themselves if only they can find the strength to look after each other while simultaneously striving to escape the traumatic circumstances that have forced them onto the streets.

Tokyo Strayers screened as part of this year’s Toronto Japanese Film Festival.

Trailer (English subtitles)


One Last Love Letter (人はなぜラブレターを書くのか, Yuya Ishii, 2026)

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“Why do people write love letters?” is the question posed by the Japanese title of Yuya Ishii’s latest film, which turns out to be less about romance than the regret that stems from things left unsaid. Love letters, it seems to say, are written more for the writer than the recipient, but can, at the same time, bring about a sense of closure or peace of mind in having communicated something that would otherwise have lingered as an unresolved mystery.

The film is inspired by a real-life incident in which a bereaved family received a letter over 20 years after their teenage son’s death in a train accident from a middle-aged woman who’d had a crush on him at the time but never got a chance to say anything. It is, of course, also drawing inspiration from Shunji Iwai’s seminal 90s romantic melodrama Love Letter in which a young woman sends a letter to her late fiancé she doesn’t expect to be delivered only to get an unexpected reply. After receiving some upsetting news about a medical condition and being reminded of her own first love by her teenage daughter Mai’s (Airi Nishikawa) eerily similar experience, Nazuna (Haruka Ayase) is prompted to write a letter to Shinsuke (Kanata Hosoda), a boy she liked on the train, but eventually decides against sending it, only for it to end up being delivered anyway.

Her medical prognosis is, in some ways, the reason that Nazuna writes the letter, knowing that Shinsuke is already dead, and that writing it will allow her to sort out her own feelings. She says in the letter that there is no one else that she can talk to, though she has a husband and daughter she otherwise struggles to communicate with. She too afraid to tell her daughter that her medical condition has declined and is living in a kind of limbo state with something left permanently unsaid. To begin with, there are hints that Nazuna’s marriage is unhappy with her husband Ryoichi (Satoshi Tsumabuki) a perpetually gloomy presence who stays out late drinking alone after work presumably to avoid coming home. Likewise, his gruff instructions to Nazuna that she should give up her vegetable garden and cafe business come off as patriarchal and controlling, though his irritation later seems to be an expression of the pressure lack of communication is placing on the family unit. He wanted Nazuna to give up her vegetable garden out of consideration for her physical condition, but phrased it badly, and later changes tack to help out as he and Mai harvest the vegetables together. 

In that sense it’s a little ironic that it’s Mai who is the open communicator and directly asks her mother for romantic advice having also fallen for a boy on the train, though one in her class at school. Nazuna’s letter brings comfort to Shinsuke’s parents precisely because he had been an uncommunicative son and parts of his life remained a mystery to them. Shortly before his death, he had begun to open up, but they are still left with regret that they did not have the opportunity to talk more and left many things unsaid. It’s this realisation that prompts Nazuna to have a serious discussion with her daughter about her health and implications for the future, reducing the sense of distance and anxiety caused by a lack of communication and allowing them to come together as a family.

In the end, the daughter’s first love turns not to be such a big deal and is quickly forgotten in favour of the central messages of making sure you say everything that needs to be said while you can still say it rather than being left with lingering regrets. Mai comes to see her mother less as the “random weed” of her name, and more as a hardy plant that can grow anywhere meaning that Nazuna is still somewhere close by watching over her, so she feels secure in her maternal legacy and family history as she begins to embark on her own story. In its own way, the film itself is a kind of love letter from a daughter to a mother that brings its own kind of healing in bringing the past full circle.

One Last Love Letter screened as part of this year’s Toronto Japanese Film Festival.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Samurai Vengeance (木挽町のあだ討ち, Takashi Minamoto, 2026)

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The life of a samurai is to some extent dependent on ritual. It’s as much a performance as anything else, yet, unlike a play, these actions often have very real and destructive consequences that result in bloodshed or exile. Though absurd and arbitrary, it’s adhering to this code of ethics that makes one a samurai, and once set in motion the consequences of a particular action proceed with inevitability. One cannot, in the end, escape one’s duty or destiny even by resigning samurai status.

This is really the idea at the centre of Takashi Minamoto’s Samurai Vengeance (木挽町のあだ討ち, Kobikicho no Adauchi) in which a playwright conspires to take the blood out of revenge and finds largely that the conditions are met for the samurai world to continue on without incident. The fact that the act of vengeance is essentially theatre is clear from the opening sequence in which fallen samurai theatre director Kinji (Ken Watanabe) orders the spotlight-like lanterns to be turned on the scene of a young man who has raised his sword against an older one he holds responsible for the death of his father. The action takes place adjacent to a theatre where a performance of the 47 Ronin, one of the most famous tales of vengeance in Japanese history, has just concluded, and this is, in a way, a continuation of that. Attracted by the commotion, a crowd has started to gather around the two men that becomes both audience and witness to this act of performative justice.

But then the film wrong-foots us slightly, and we realise the central mystery is not to do with the staged performance itself, but the true identity of the man who has come around asking questions about it. Kase (Tasuku Emoto) too is playing a role, in this appearing as a bumbling, Kindaichi-like presence claiming to be a friend of the dead man, Sakubei (Kazuki Kitamura), who to some extent did not really exist having been giving an entirely new persona to suit the narrative of the staged revenge plot. Though Kase claims to have been kicked out of his clan and become a ronin himself, which explains why he has no money and is always hungry, he is later revealed to be a clan investigator who has fallen foul of the authorities after attempting to expose the corruption of a senior retainer.

Though the rules of samurai society may be strict, they can be gamed by those ruthless enough to subvert them for their own ends. This seems to be something that Lady Tae, the mother of the revenge-seeking Kikunosuke (Kento Nagao), knew all too well and understanding the performative nature of samurai justice, turned to her old friend Kinji to save her son from falling victim to the cruelty of their class. At only 17, Kikunosuke is a slender and effete young man of delicate features and sensibility. He does not appear to be suited to the harshness of samurai mores and being forced to take the head of a man who not only saved his life but is someone he’s been close to since the day he was born would likely destroy him.

His fragility is signalled in the fact he first appears dressed as a woman in a beautiful red kimono passed down from a retired onnagata to the current holder of his name. As they say, the world of the theatre is like another country and a place where those who do not otherwise fit into Edo society can be accepted. Kikuosuke’s vulnerability and the unfairness of his plight endear him to the members of the theatre company who all feel an instinctive need to protect him. Indeed, Kikuosuke himself says that he is sorry to have to leave the theatre behind and will never forget the six months that he has spent there. It may be that he is much more suited to living in this environment which is the antithesis of samurai rigidity. In the end, the symbolic need for “vengeance” is satisfied without actual bloodshed. Though those in power know this to be so, they accept it and decline to ask further questions, but still the samurai world continues as it is and others will not be so lucky as to avoid paying with their lives for offending its exceedingly arbitrary values.

Samurai Vengeance screens as part of this year’s Toronto Japanese Film Festival.

Trailer (no subtitles)