The Vancouver Asahi (バンクーバーの朝日, Yuya Ishii, 2014)

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Second generation Japanese-Canadians stake their hopes on baseball in Yuya Ishii’s historical drama The Vancouver Asahi (バンクーバーの朝日, Vancouver no Asahi), inspired by the story of the Vancouver Asahi baseball team which was belatedly granted a place in the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame in 2003. In many ways a conventional sporting movie in which the underdogs eventually triumph, Ishii does not shy away from the dark shadows of the 1930s even while framing the Asahi’s path to glory as a symbolic punch back against discrimination and oppression. 

As the hero, Reggie (Satoshi Tsumabuki), relates, many like his parents came to Canada at the beginning of the 20th century planning to work for three years and then return to a more comfortable life in Japan only to find themselves trapped in low-paid and exploitative work. Reggie’s main concern is that his drunken and dejected father Seiji (Koichi Sato) still sends the majority of his pay back relatives in Japan meaning their family live like paupers while as he never meant to stay he hasn’t bothered to learn the language or attempt to integrate into the local community. In fact, Reggie is their major breadwinner with his job at the sawmill but the only thing that makes his life worth living is playing baseball with the Vancouver Asahi baseball team even though they are regarded as something of a joke, always at the bottom of the league tables and never actually winning a game. 

The plight of Asahi is closely aligned with that of the immigrant community, divided as it is in its approach to integration with some feeling they should abandon their Japaneseness in order to better get along with Canadians and others fiercely determined to hang on to their traditions. When Reggie admits that they can’t win against the power of the Canadians it feels as if he’s talking about more than just baseball though his solutions are perhaps apt for both in realising that to beat strength you need to be smart. What he comes up with is essentially a bunt and run strategy that plays to their advantages of speed and lightness but also at times feels to him like a trick or a gimmick, an admission that they can’t compete in the normal way. “Why are you always apologising?” Reggie is repeatedly asked, his shyness and mumbling speech always seeking to keep the peace while his desire to offer justification is less as one Japanese old lady puts it “a bad habit of their culture” but a defence mechanism in an environment of potentially violent oppression. 

As Japanese migrants the family faces constant xenophobic micro aggressions, a woman at the hotel refusing to let Reggie’s bellboy friend Frank (Sosuke Ikematsu) carry her bags while they are also suspected as thieves or harassed by the local Canadians. Reggie’s hothead friend Kei (Ryo Katsuji) finds it increasingly difficult to keep his cool, not least as it turns out because his father was killed fighting for the Canadians in the last war and yet he is still treated as a dangerous outsider. Meanwhile, they are paid only half the wages of the Canadian workers, expected to work unreasonable hours, and can be fired without warning. Now an ageing man, Seiji is still a casual labourer fighting for a place on a truck to work at a quarry or construction site often in other towns away from his family in order to get more money. The team is constantly losing players because men lose their jobs and focus on finding new ones or moving away. As one old man laments, there’s no job security and even if you go to a Canadian university it won’t make any difference to your job prospects. Reggie’s sister Emi (Mitsuki Takahata) was on track for a scholarship only to have it pulled at the last minute when parents of the other kids complained it wasn’t right it was going to a Japanese girl. 

After the hotel fires all of its Japanese staff, Frank decides to go “back” to Japan where relatives will help him find work but pointing out to Reggie that he’ll still be seen as an outsider even there and there’s no guarantee anything will be any better in Japan. Poignantly the guys later catch sight of him in a newsreel as a soldier having been sent to the Machurian front. Once war breaks out they are discriminated against again, forced out of their homes and interned leaving all their property behind and destroying their small community, the Asahi included. The team’s unexpected success had forged a bridge between the Japanese and Canadian communities but it was not strong enough to survive the war. Stepping away from the sports movie, Ishii concentrates more on the ways they were betrayed, the team’s success later buried and forgotten while they find the advances they’d made washed away on the shore as if to suggest their strike back against an oppressive society could never be more than superficial while their position remains so precarious. 

Trailer (no subtitles)

So Beautiful, Wonderful and Lovely (素敵すぎて素敵すぎて素敵すぎる, Megumi Okawara, 2025)

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Is it better to have a dream that will never come true or to have no dreams at all? That’s a question that Nozomi can’t help asking herself after her world comes crashing down when she discovers her boyfriend is randomly marrying someone else. Nevertheless, she comes to realise that her life is and always has been So Beautiful, Wonderful, and Lovely (素敵すぎて素敵すぎて素敵すぎる, Sutekisugite, Sutekisugite, Suteki Sugite) in Megumi Okawara’s quirky indie dramedy of endless heartbreak and constant absurdity.

At least, there’s nothing more absurd than being haunted by the spirit of your very much still alive boyfriend in the form of a slice of castella cake. Nozomi’s mother has been tearfully trying to perfect a party trick to perform at the wedding of her daughter to boyfriend Chitose, but unbeknownst to her, Chitose has married someone else. Gatecrashing the ceremony, Nozomi teamed up with Chitose’s brother Susumu to hijack the wedding photo and then run off with the camera though she ended up crashing into a castella cake delivery guy and landing in hospital with a brace around her neck. The neck brace is perhaps a symbol of the way Nozomi’s world has been narrowed, preventing her from turning her head to find new directions in life. But those would be hard to find anyway when you’re being followed around by a guy who looks like your ex but also claims to be a piece of sentient cake. 

To begin with, she tries to have fun with Castella-Chitose by going on influencer-style dates such as a visit to his “birthplace” (a castella cake shop) while trying to understand her relationship with the “real” Chitose who not is particularly nice and very pissed off about everything that happened with his wedding along with Nozomi’s lingering attachment to him. She seems to want to continue with the relationship as it was even though he treats her poorly and has already married someone else, while he just seems to be paranoid that she plans to expose their affair even if he does accept responsibility in having behaved badly by never mentioning that he already had girlfriend and for an unknown reason also keeping his wedding and marriage a secret from his colleagues at the school where they both work. 

After making an “affair”-themed video it seems designed to blackmail him into getting back with her, Nozomi (whose name means “hope”) decides to make a fresh start by getting a job in a stationery shop which also turns out to be staffed by people with broken dreams. Her eccentric boss Yoko and the other clerk apparently live in adjacent wardrobes at a rented apartment while Anita, a middle-aged man too timid to interact with customers, worries for his daughter who has broken dreams of her own. Surreal as it is with its weird customers who turn up to see the “new products” or try to buy crab rice which they obviously don’t sell, Nozomi begins to find a new sense of belonging and solidarity as she grieves her failed relationship with Chitose which is set to expire in exactly two weeks’ time when the castella finally meets its best before date.

But then what she discovers is that the thing about dreams that don’t come is that they never expire. Perhaps it really is better to have a dream that won’t come true than not have a dream at all. Or at least, that’s what her new colleagues seem to show her even the midst of their loneliness as they latch on to each other and remind Nozomi that as Castella-Chitose said she matters and that there are people who love and care for her in ways that the real Chitose obviously never did. She wishes most of her life were a dream, while her dreams never come true but still her life is and has always been so beautiful, wonderful, and lovely even if she’s only just really becoming able to appreciate it thanks to her new friends who are giving her the courage to dream new dreams and move on from her disappointing relationship with Chitose while watched over by the spirit of castella cake. Defiantly weird but also warm and wholesome, the final message is that it’s best to embrace life’s strangeness along with its joys and heartbreaks while continuing to dream even if those dreams may never come true.

So Beautiful, Wonderful and Lovely screened as part of this year’s Osaka Asian Film Festival.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Amazon Bullseye (아마존 활명수, Kim Chang-ju, 2024)

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A harried Korean executive finds common ground with a trio of men from an Amazonian indigenous community while training them to win a medal in an international archery competition in Kim Chang-ju’s genial comedy, Amazon Bullseye (아마존 활명수, Amazon Hwalmyeongsu). Though mostly avoiding the obvious pitfalls of its subject matter and taking extreme care to be respectful to the indigenous people of the Amazon, it has to be said that the film otherwise has some rather outdated humour. Nevertheless, it does have some secondary points to make about exploitative businesses practices in Korea and abroad along with the destruction of natural world that goes hand in hand with capitalist expansion.

Jin-bong (Ryu Seung-ryong) once won a gold medal for archery, but is now a middle-aged office worker whose career is on the skids. After chewing him out for failing to make any significant deals, his boss, Park (Jeon Seok-ho), has a new proposition for him. He wants Jin-bong to go to the Amazonian nation of Boledor and close a deal to allow them to open a gold mine or else face compulsory redundancy. He’s supposed to do this by coaching their national archery team to win a medal in the upcoming championships. Unfortunately, the helicopter he’s travelling on is struck by lightning and he’s marooned in the jungle only to be rescued by an indigenous community who then conclude he’s an emissary from the Boledor authorities and has come to destroy the village in which case he must die. 

But Jin-bong finds unexpected connection with Walbu (J.B. Oliveira) who is also a father of three children and is later welcomed after saving his daughter from a wolf attack. As the young men communicate with the animal and try to convince it to return to the forest, it becomes obvious that they have a respect for the land that an urban man like Jin-bong does not. Unbeknownst to him, they have already refused permission to open the goldmine and are fiercely opposed to any encroachment on their land or traditional way of life. After seeing just how bad the national team is, Jin-bong has the idea of asking the men from the indigenous community to compete instead but is only able to persuade them by convincing the president to legally sign the land over so it can’t ever be redeveloped and they’ll never be moved on. 

Of course, that wasn’t quite what his boss had in mind so even though Jin-bong is protective of the Tagauri, it’s clear his company always meant to exploit them and doesn’t care about the environment or the preservation of traditional culture. Jin-bong too is oppressed by this system and only participates in the first place because he fears losing his job not least because it’s so unlikely he’d be able to find another at his age. Jin-bong has three children and a feisty wife (Yeom Hye-ran ) who complains that she’s already had to sell some of their possessions because they can’t afford all the bills on their poky flat. He may then envy the apparent simplicity of life in the forest. On returning home the three men remark on how silly everyone is in Korea suffering all month long for something called “money” they use to buy tasteless “dead meat” rather than going into the forest and getting some like a normal person. But they also point out that they aren’t really all that different seeing as people still love their children and fathers work hard to support and protect them. 

Nevertheless, there are perhaps a few too many jokes about Jin-bong’s “scary” nagging wife and his position as a henpecked husband. It may also go too far in exploring cultural difference as the trio is arrested for doing things like carrying their bows and arrows around and using them to shoot fish in the river that runs through the middle of Seoul. They also start a campfire in Jin-bong’s apartment to make a traditional smoked chicken dish and are confused by Jin-bong’s reaction to this well-meaning attempt to share their culture with him. While they’re in Korea, they start to become a little more Korean with chieftain’s son Eba (Luan Brum) even developing an appreciation for super spicy kimchi. But they also observe the high rise buildings and constant construction as echoes of the fate that may soon befall the village if the Bolderan government and Jin-bong’s company get their way. Through their sporting pursuit, the men discover a way to take back control, tell the world about the Tagauri, and mobilise public opinion against the faceless corporation to ensure that they can protect their land and way of life from the ravages of chaebol culture.

Trailer (Korean subtitles only)

BFI to Host “Myriad Voices: Reframing Taiwan New Cinema”

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Throughout April 2025, the BFI will be hosting a season of films exploring Taiwanese New Cinema from new perspectives including a selection of films from lesser known filmmakers alongside those of heavy hitters such as Edward Yang and Hou Hsiao-hsien.

Duckweed (aka Floating Weeds)

Edward Yang’s television debut after returning to Taiwan, Duckweed was part of the Eleven Women TV series produced by Sylvia Chang and Chen Chun-tian, and follows a young woman who moves to Taipei from the countryside to become a model.

In Our Time

1982 anthology film featuring instalments directed by Tao Te-chen, Edward Yang, Ko I-chen, Chang Yi.

The Boys from Fengkuei

1983 drama from Hou Hsiao-hsien following a group of young men who leave their fishing village after getting into trouble with gangsters and try to make new lives for themselves in Kaohsiung.

Chen Kun-hou, who was the film’s cinematographer, will introduce the screening on 11th April.

The Sandwich Man

Tripartite anthology film featuring instalments by Hou Hsiao-hsien, Tseng Chuang-hsiang, and Wan Jen adapting short stories by Huang Chun-ming.

Out of the Blue

1984 drama from Chen Kun-hou in which teenagers Jielong and Tangmi spend a single night together before she disappears and Jielong must return to university.

Director Chen Kun-hou will be present for a Q&A following the screening on 10th April.

Ah Fei

Drama adapted from a short story by Liao Hui-ying and following a woman over several decades after the Chinese Civil War.

Kuei-mei, a Woman

A woman’s stoical endurance of hardship as she travels towards hard-won prosperity mirrors that of her nation in Chang Yi’s allegorical maternal melodrama. Review.

My Favorite Season

1985 Chen Kun-hou drama starring Sylvia Chang as a woman who conceives a child with her married boss but wants to break up with him and raise the baby on her own.

Director Chen Kun-hou will be present for a Q&A following the screening on 11th April.

Taipei Story

An ambitious young woman is determined to keep pushing forward while her more traditional boyfriend remains trapped in the past in Yang’s melancholy urban drama. Review.

A Time to Live and a Time to Die

Semi-autobiographical drama from Hou Hsiao-hsien following a young man in Fengshan from 1947 to 1965.

This Love of Mine

Psychological drama from Chang Yi adapted from the novel by Hsiao Sa in which a woman must re-evaluate her life after learning of her husband’s affair.

The Terrorisers

Landmark drama from Edward Yang in which a doctor and his novelist wife teetering on the brink of divorce, a voyeuristic photographer, and a rebellious teen are connected by a single event.

Strawman

Satirical comedy set at the end of the war in which two farmers find an unexploded bomb in their field and decide to carry it to the Japanese police in the hope of a reward.

Autumn Tempest

Huang Yu-shan’s 1988 narrative film debut in which a young man retreats to a mountain temple to study but enters an affair with a young woman who subsequently becomes pregnant.

Director Huang Yu-shan will be present for a Q&A following the screening on 12th April.

A City of Sadness

Historical drama from Hou Hsiao-hsien set immediately after the liberation from Japanese colonial rule following a family who become embroiled in the White Terror following the February 28 incident.

Myriad Voices: Reframing Taiwan New Cinema runs at the BFI Southbank throughout April.

Crimson Wings (紅の翼, Ko Nakahira, 1958)

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A heroic pilot on a mission to get life-saving medicine to a small boy on a remote island unexpectedly finds himself frustrated by a wanted man in Ko Nakahira’s aviation thriller, Crimson Wings (紅の翼, Kurenai no Tsubasa). This is of course a time in which air travel was still something new and exciting, but not only that, it also offered immense improvements to those living far flung areas making travel to the mainland far easier and much less time-consuming. 

Time is, however, of the essence as a little boy on Hachijojima has contracted tetanus and the only stocks of the antidote on the island are out of date. If they can’t get replacements in the next few hours, it will be too late. Hachijojima is a fairly remote island in the Philippine sea that was used as a base for suicide submarine missions during the war but was developed as a tourist destination in the years afterwards in which it was dubbed “The Hawaii of Japan”. It didn’t quite take off until the 1960s tourism boom, but this is perhaps the reason why there’s an air shuttle service to Tokyo three times a week that is described by the stewardess as their most popular route. It might also explain why part of her job is acting as a tour guide, pointing out important Tokyo landmarks passengers can see from their windows as they come in to land. In any case, it’s the most obvious way to get the serum to the island seeing as there’s a charter flight set to leave in a couple of hours’ time.

But that same day across town, a CEO, Iwami (Toru Abe), is assassinated by a yakuza hitman named Itagaki (Hideaki Nitani). Predictably, he’s the one who’s charted the flight as a speedy getaway and he’s not all that keen on hanging around waiting for the delivery of the tetanus serum. One of the pilots describes Iwami as “take over king” and the “richest tycoon in post-war Japan”, which is to say they don’t have tremendous sympathy for him as someone who’s almost certainly made his money through nefarious means. Itagaki even remarks that he was “one of us,” the only difference between them being that where yakuza use guns he used money though his killing him was a matter of purely business. He didn’t ask or care why Iwami had to die, but obviously thought he was fair game anyway. 

You can tell that Itagaki is not the sympathetic kind of gangster right away when he mows down a little girl while fleeing the scene, her little yellow balloon sadly flying off into the distance. His indifference to the girl’s death is ironic considering the rest of the film revolves around the struggle to save the life of a little boy, directly contrasting his callousness with the righteousness of the pilot, Ishida (Yujiro Ishihara), who is prepared to risk his own life to deliver the serum. Ishida hadn’t previously volunteered for the job because he was supposed to be going on a Christmas Eve date with stewardess Keiko (Shinako Mine), only she tells him she has to cancel because her father is on a surprise trip to town. Unbeknownst to him, however, she’s actually blown him off to go to a Christmas market with another man. In any case, with nothing else to do he accepted the job even though it involves going in a Cessna because of a malfunction on their regular plane that will take too long to repair. 

Aside from having to take Itagaki, who is pretending to be on an emergency trip to visit his mother’s grave, Ishida is also accompanied by pushy journalist Yumie (Sanae Nakahara) who was sent to the airport to interview Keiko as part of a series about “working girls” that she doesn’t seem particularly enthused by. In fact, she’s actually quite rude, elaborating that she’s already interviewed a TV producer and a continuity girl describing them all including stewardess as “glamour jobs” that don’t require very much in the way of brains as journalism obviously does. That might in a way reflect her own resentment in that it’s obvious she feels the paper’s not giving her a fair shake because she’s a woman which might be why she jumps so hard on the tetanus story sensing the potential for a heartwarming human interest article. She does however seem to genuinely care about the little boy on Hachijojima. Not only does she immediately arrange for a large amount of the serum to be delivered by police escort but insists on going to the island herself and after figuring out Itagaki is the fugitive thanks to her transistor radio sticks to the main mission rather than switching to the one about the CEO murder. 

Ishida meanwhile remains a cool-headed wisecracker brazening it out against Itagaki in the knowledge that he can’t actually kill him because he doesn’t know how to fly a plane so all his threats are meaningless. There’s also a rather awkward subplot about Ishida’s brother being a kamikaze pilot during in the war which is intended to further bear out Ishida’s righteousness while his sister (Izumi Ashikawa) also makes a long speech about how he said if he had to he’d like to die like him and is the sort of person who can’t stand by and watch someone suffer. A lengthy sequence switches between various branches of the Japanese government and self-defence forces, as well as the US military, who all swap messages between themsleves and immediately scramble to find this one Cessna when it inevitably gets into trouble and drops off radar. The message seems to be that the system works and the authorities are ready to handle events such as this. Using some impressive aeroplane footage along with a series of split screens and a memorable opening POV shot to disguise the assassin’s identity, Nakahira gives the otherwise lighthearted thriller a little more weight while still allowing its wholesome goodness to shrine through as a collection of determined people come together to save a little boy they don’t even know who lives on a remote island where the children work in soil-pits to make extra money which might as well be a million miles away from the modern capital with greedy fat cat CEO’s and nihilistic yakuza.

Trailer (no subtitles)

Yukiko a.k.a (雪子 a.k.a., Naoya Kusaba, 2024)

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“Leave no one behind,” is the theory underpinning the SDGs that primary school teacher Yukiko (Rio Yamashita) is teaching to her students, but it’s also a practice that she unconsciously puts into practice only largely tends to forget to include herself. Timid and insecure, she makes little mark on the world around her and is afraid to express herself which she fears also interferes with her ability to interact with the children worrying that her reticence to speak up because she’s too worried they’ll say it’s all her fault prevents her from asking them if they’re alright or they need any help or guidance. 

It’s only through the possibly surprising hobby of rap music that she finds an outlet where she can be herself and say everything that’s on her mind, only most of her raps are all about her anxiousness and inability to communicate. She has however found a supportive community in a local park where there are a group of rappers who seem to have her back and encourage her to get more into the hobby by participating in rap battles so she can express herself more. It seems though that part of her anxiety stems from a sense that she’s approaching a crossroads in life and is in many ways dissatisfied. She’s been in a long-term relationship with another teacher, Kodai (Daichi Watanabe), she met when they were both students but as he’s been assigned to another school a long way away, they only meet up at weekends.

All around her, her friends are getting married and it seems Kodai may also be ready to pop what seems to most an inevitable question, but there’s something that seems to be holding her back. Kodai later tells her that he doesn’t like the her that does rap, which suggests in a way that he doesn’t really want the version of her that can express herself or is confident in saying what she does and doesn’t want. He’s much more interested in the timid Yukiko who meekly goes along with what he wants and is too afraid to rock the boat. A fellow teacher, Riho (Hina Higuchi), has an ambition to be married with a child before 30, which is surprising to Yukiko and often criticised for being old fashioned. Yet what the film seems to insist is that neither perspective is wrong, merely different, and largely a matter of what suits each individual. Riho is cool in her own way for living her life the way she chooses even if it conflicts with the prevailing attitude of the contemporary society and it’s this sense of empowerment that Yukiko is really seeking as an older teacher, Ohsako (Fusako Urabe), explains. With her short hair and serious demeanour it might be assumed that the kids wouldn’t like Ohsako, but she’s actually their favourite and perhaps precisely because of her self-assuredness. In contrast to the ultramodern Riho she likes to hand write and draw her teaching materials as a means of transmitting sincerity and integrity to the children while acting as a voice of authority between the teachers. 

Indeed, it’s Ohsako who largely teaches the film’s lessons and Yukiko how to embrace herself so that she can communicate better with the students explaining that her ability to pick up on the same anxieties in them is much more valuable than anything else. Locking eyes with a distressed young girl during a PE lesson, she quickly figures out that she’s experiencing menstrual cramps and is able to take her to the nurse’s office for some positive help and support. Meanwhile, she struggles with two boys in her class one of whom has become a school refuser and hikikomori. She visits Rui at his home every week with handouts but fails to make a breakthrough until she too is brave enough to expose her own fears and doubts. His deskmate Kotaro is now forced to join in with the girls either in front or behind when they’re asked to do pair work because of the painfully empty seat next to him.

But then unbeknownst to Yukiko, times have changed. Rui is not completely isolated but has been communicating with his friends, including Kotaro, through video games which as Kotaro’s father says is just as real to the children as talking in person. He’s also got really into educational apps and might have actually learned more by himself at home, which isn’t great for Yukiko’s self-esteem but at least he’s doing alright even if she might be becoming obsolete. Meanwhile the school still insists on making the kids read out loud to their parents who are then supposed to fill in a comment sheet but Kotaro writes those himself because his mum’s too busy. Nervously challenged by Yukiko, Kotaro’s mother asks what the educational point of the exercise is. She says she has her own way of communicating with her son and doesn’t have time for this meaningless bit of form filling. Yukiko’s insistence that it’s only 10 minutes belies a lack of understanding that Kotaro’s mother, who seems to be a working lone parent, simply doesn’t have another 10 minutes in her day. Still, the point is that Yukiko doesn’t really know the educational point of the exercise but has only been doing it because it’s what you do without giving it any real thought. 

But as Ohsako had said, maybe neither way is wrong, it’s just a matter of personal taste. Through her rap music hobby,  Yukiko begins to accept another side of herself while gaining the courage to be more confident and express herself more freely. She realises that it doesn’t really matter if she wins a rap battle or not because even putting herself out there was a minor victory that convinces her she has the power to do things with her life and live it in a way that best suits her while teaching similar lessons to the children and finally listening to her own advice.

Yukiko a.k.a screens in Chicago 22nd March as part of the 19th edition of Asian Pop-Up Cinema.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Sunset Sunrise (サンセット・サンライズ, Yoshiyuki Kishi, 2024)

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In a way, the 2020 coronavirus pandemic presented a kind of turning point in which it became possible to envision a different kind of future brokered by technological advance in which society was no longer ruled by the dominance of the cities. If people could work remotely from anywhere, then they could easily improve their standard of living by moving to more rural areas for cheaper rents and healthier environments. Assuming the infrastructure was in place to allow them to do so, they could also support and reinvigorate communities struggling with depopulation in which the young have all left for the cities leaving the elderly behind to fend for themselves.

It’s an elegant solution that solves many of the problems of the contemporary society, but change isn’t always as straightforward as it seems as the hero of Yoshiyuki Kishi’s Sunset Sunrise (サンセット・サンライズ) finds out after he jumps at the chance to move into an abandoned house in Tohoku for a fraction of the rent he’d have to pay for a flat in Tokyo if he didn’t still live with his parents. The catch is, however, that houses have souls too and are more than just places to live for those that own or inherit them. Momoka (Mao Inoue), who decides to put her own empty house on the market, has her reasons for not wanting to live there herself nor for selling it completely but renting it out is also emotionally difficult. In the end, she only really does it after being put in charge of the town’s empty house problem at her job working for the council and thinking she should probably start with her own. Not knowing what to charge, it hadn’t really occurred to her someone would be as interested as Shinsaku (Masaki Suda), a fishing enthusiast longing to escape his salaryman life in the city for something a little more traditional in a peaceful rural area. 

Then again, that’s not to say that Shinsaku is a traditionalist and his decision quickly sparks controversy but also attracts the attention of his boss who senses a promising business opportunity. Momoka’s is a slightly special case, but Japan is filled with these so-called “akiya” which might, amid the work from home revolution of the pandemic, now be attractive to young professionals looking for a better environment to start a family. Houses generally start to deteriorate quite quickly when no one lives in them, and it’s true a lot of them need some work doing but it’s an idea that could work out well for everyone. Younger people who can’t find decent living space in the cities would be able to afford larger homes in the country where they would also then be contributing and integrating into the local community to provide support for its elderly residents.

Shinsaku becomes a part of the local community quite quickly and strikes up a friendship with an elderly woman whose children have all moved to Tokyo and rarely visit now that their own children are getting older. They’ve asked her to move to Tokyo with them, but as she points out, it would be the same as them moving back. There’s nothing for her to do there, and she’d have no friends. She’d only feel in the way and that she was getting under her daughter-in-law’s feet. Nevertheless, they fear for her especially as the area is still dealing with the scars of the 2011 earthquake which have left many clinging to a now bygone past. Once Momoka and Shinsaku start working with his boss on the akiya project, they find it hard to convince the inheritors of the houses to agree. Though they won’t live there, they might want to pop back a few times a year just for the memories and somehow can’t bear to part with their childhood or relative’s homes. But Shinsaku points out, it doesn’t necessarily have to be a case of either or and the renovation projects they undertake modernise the houses in a sympathetic way that brings them up to date with modern living yet honours the past even sometimes incorporating some of the previous resident’s furniture and belongings while issuing a caveat that the owners are welcome to visit should they wish to.

Essentially, the idea is a kind of co-existence with the past but also with unresolved trauma such as that presented by the earthquake and the ongoing pandemic. Momoka too is struggling to move on and while a gradual romance seems to arise between herself and Shinsaku, she isn’t sure she can ever let the past go though he makes it clear it’s okay to bring it with her. For his part, despite the initial fears of the early pandemic period and the suspicion of him as an outsider, Shinsaku’s quickly taken in by the community and adapts to a more rural way of life with relative ease though his boss’ big plan is rather undermined by his later insistence that he come back to Tokyo to run the project from the office like a many a contemporary CEO rolling back promises of flexible working environments that make this kind of utopian ideal much harder to materialise. In any case, there’s something quite refreshening in the eventual resolution just to do their own thing, not particularly paying attention to labels or what other people might think, but just doing what makes them happy right now. As an old fisherman’s song says, the sun sets but then it rises again. Scripted by Kankuro Kudo and adapted from a novel by Shuhei Nire, the film has kind of wholesome optimism that is rooted in a sense of continuity but also the potential to start again and make a new life inside the old that is less bound by outdated social norms than brokered by the gentle solidarity between people and a generosity of spirit that allows all to seek happiness in whatever way they choose.

Sunset Sunrise screens in Chicago 22nd March as part of the 19th edition of Asian Pop-Up Cinema.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Yoyogi Johnny (代々木ジョニーの憂鬱な放課後, Satoshi Kimura, 2025)

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Not much makes a lot of sense in the world of the titular Yoyogi Johnny. Nothing’s quite as it first seems and life is full of contradictions, but that’s alright, for the most part. Johnny just floats on through life going with the flow, but then he meets a series of girls who each for some reason want to practice things with him though for very different reasons while he tries to make sense of it all and gain the courage to push for what he really wants.

Then again, he breaks up with Asako (Mio Matsuda) because he realises he likes her in the same way he likes “history” which is to say, when someone asks him what his favourite subject is he just says that but doesn’t actually know if he even likes history or not. Having never been in love, he doesn’t know what it’s like and therefore wants to end the relationship. Mostly he just spends his time hanging out in the “squash club” where they don’t actually play any squash but just use the clubroom to hideout from the less satisfying aspects of their lives or otherwise avoid other people. In fact, they’re only in the squash club to make up the numbers and were all looking to start clubs of their own but for various reasons were prevented from doing so. But when a mysterious young woman they christen Deko (Shieru Yoshii) for her prominent forehead arrives at the club looking for the founder, Ondera, whom they call “Button”, it wrecks their peaceful lives because of her insistence that they actually play some squash.

Deko wants to practice squash with him, but his childhood friend Kagura (Runa Ichinose) wants him to role play real world interactions while she has otherwise become a virtual recluse who no longer attends school. Meanwhile, he’s also drawn to a colleague at his part-time job at a bookshop/bar, Izumo (Maya Imamori), who is also the boss’ daughter. Somewhat salaciously, she wants him to practice “physical contact,” as that’s one of the areas she has difficulty in having herself also been a recluse who dropped out of school and has come to Tokyo for a fresh start. Johnny immediately picks up on this irony of Izumo salmoning her way to the capital while, in general, most people are travelling away from the city to a less populated area for a quieter life rather than the other way around though like many of these conversations it’s lost on Izumo to whom it is of course just normal. Johnny has several of these conversations in which he attempts to point out that something doesn’t make sense but just finds himself trapped in an infinite loop of back and fore as the other person struggles to understand his logic or he theirs. He is however a kind person who tries to help everyone who asks him though perhaps without really thinking about it. 

Yet most of the young women eventually oscillate out of his life depriving him of these very important friendships and ironically rebounding to the squash club even though they now actually have to play squash. Nevertheless, through his various relationships Johnny begins to gain a new perspective on himself and even finds out what it’s like to fall in love. A strange young woman who seems to be part of what very much looks like a cult, reminds him that “self-sufficiency” is a lie even though it’s supposedly what their cult is founded on. It is after all an organisation that promotes “independent living” while sending its members who all live in the dorm to farm the fields, though this yet another thing that doesn’t really make sense but Johnny just has to accept. Nevertheless, it seems she’s right when she says people can’t live by themselves alone and by and large need each other to survive. She tells Johnny that he should stop visiting Kagura because it’s “meaningless” and wouldn’t help her, but at the same time seems to appreciate his good-naturedness and the gentle positivity he puts out into the world in his ability to just be nice and be there for that want or need him while never expecting anything in return. As he’s fond of saying, if you regard a person as a friend then it doesn’t really matter whether they agree or not they’re still your friend and Johnny has more than many might awesome he would. Warm-hearted and filled zany humour, the retro aesthetic of its opening titles only adds to film’s charm as a little gem of indie comedy.

Yoyogi Johnny screened as part of this year’s Osaka Asian Film Festival.

Trailer (no subtitles)

Home for Rent (บ้านเช่า..บูชายัญ, Sophon Sakdaphisit, 2023)

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An inability to overcome the traumatic past leaves a family vulnerable to the dark machinations of a black magic cult in Sophon Sakdaphisit’s supernatural thriller, Home for Rent (บ้านเช่า..บูชายัญ). The film’s title is eventually revealed as a grim irony, the home in question a seat of the soul though like the director’s previous films it’s economic anxiety and social aspiration that open the door to damnation even if in this case there’s something more than fate in play.

All of Ning’s (Nittha Jirayungyurn) problems start when the flat she owns to let out is vandalised by a vacating talent. As she explains to the estate agent, Tom (Suphithak Chatsuriyawong), she can’t afford to refurbish it and the rent was covering the mortgage on the house she actually lives in which belongs to her husband, Kwin (Sukollawat Kanarot). Tom floats the idea of the family moving into the flat while they tidy it up and renting the house out instead, but Ning is worried Kwin won’t like the idea. She’s right, he doesn’t and suggests it would be easier to just sell the flat but Ning doesn’t want to do that either. The reasons for her attachment to it aren’t completely clear, but if she were keeping it as a safety net it might hint at a degree of insecurity in her marriage though as we later see she’s also job-hunting and not having much luck. Seeing the candidate next to her write down a much lower salary expectation she hastily changes hers too, fearing she’s pricing herself out of the market. 

As for Kwin’s reluctance to move, it may be a degree of snobbishness in not wanting to leave his large suburban house in a wealthy area for a small flat where he ends up sleeping on the sofa because the couple’s daughter Ing (Thanyaphat Mayuraleela) can’t seem to settle. As it turns out, Kwin has other reasons for remaining attached to the house and not wanting anyone else to live there but even as it stands it seems far too big for their small family and an obvious financial burden. Yet Kwin’s outward anxiety is to do with finding “high quality” tenants given what’s just happened with the flat. Ning is reassured by Tom’s confirmation that the prospective tenants are a retired doctor and her daughter though as Kwin points out, it’s mere snobbishness to assume a doctor will be a better tenant than anyone else. 

Nevertheless on meeting them, Kwin unexpectedly agrees only for Ning’s aunt and neighbour Phorn (Natniphaporm Ingamornrat) to report strange goings on at 4am such as ominous chanting and the sudden arrival of large numbers of crows. Strange things begin happening around Ning too, while Kwin’s behaviour has also become weird and irrational. Ning is however facing an uphill battle trying to get people to believe her that the couple renting her house are actually crazed cultists who may be targeting her daughter while others assume she’s going out of her mind because of the stress of maintaining it. 

The space that’s for rent in fact seems to be the human body as it becomes clear what kind of home is being sought. Aside from financial worries, the curse essentially stems from the inability to accept loss, or perhaps also the attempt to escape it by assuming new identities rather than deal with a painful past. Only Ning remains in the dark in this triangular series of relationships with pyramids an often repeated motif mimicking the dark symbol of the cult. Sophon Sakdaphisit conjures a genuine sense of eeriness within the genial suburban environment that hints at a largely invisible but pervasive evil that has Ning and her family firmly in its sights. But in other and perhaps slightly uncomfortable ways, it may be the family that eventually repairs itself in what amounts to the complete integration of the once buried traumatic past which may have destroyed what once was but has birthed something new in its place that at last seems to be free of the gloominess that once overhung the family home having relocated to a much warmer and down to earth environment in the absence of both financial and aspirational anxiety but simply content to have found a place to call home.

International trailer (English subtitles)

The Tales of Kurashiki (蔵のある街, Emiko Hiramatsu, 2025)

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Beniko’s high school art project involves recreating a picture her mother left behind that immortalised a memory of a happy family moment during the rare sight of fireworks. But Beniko can’t seem to make progress with her artwork and she’s thinking of giving up art altogether along with her ambition of attending an art school because for her painting is intrinsically linked with her familial trauma and fears for the future. It is also, however, the force that keeps her family together though not perhaps in the way she intended.

The attempt to recreate her mother’s drawing is that to reclaim her family as it was though as she later realises attempting to recreate the past exactly is a futile effort. Resentful towards her mother for leaving and perhaps also towards her father for his emotional abandonment and the absurd jealousy that left her mother with no choice but to leave, she reinvents herself as a caretaker as a way of rooting herself in the domestic space by taking care of her autistic older brother Kyosuke, affectionately known around the neighbourhood as Kyon-kun. Looking after Kyon-kun is one reason she gives for not going to art school, but as her friend points out much to Beniko’s shame, perhaps that’s not really fair to him either if she’s exploiting his need as an excuse for her cowardice while denying him the right to his own life too. He is after all a little more capable than she might give him credit for, travelling to the correct station on his own and waiting for her patiently at the other end when she misses her regular train. 

Beniko’s childhood friend Aoi later realises that he did something similar. When Kyon-kun wandered off while Beniko was distracted and climbed a tree at the shrine to watch imaginary fireworks, Aoi and his friend Kiichi, who is the son of the shrine owner, promised to set off some real fireworks for him without really thinking it through or having much intention to actually do it. But as Beniko points out, Kyon-kun never forgets a promise so now he’s asking every day when the fireworks are and is continually disappointed. Chastened by Beniko, Aoi’s half-hearted attempt to keep his promise backfires and he realises that he too thought that it didn’t really matter because it was Kyon-kun and he wouldn’t know the difference. 

Aoi’s desire to make good on his word is partly a sense of guilt and shame in his realisation of the way he’d thought of Kyon-kun, partly due to his feelings for Beniko, and partly adolescent insecurity in the acceptance that his unnecessarily harsh father has a point when he says he never follows anything through. Kiichi too is experiencing similar anxieties as his father threatens to leave the shrine to his more studious younger brother and is exasperated by his goodhearted goofiness. The trio are all really looking for new paths towards adulthood by trying to make peace with their younger selves and gain the confidence to follow their dreams even if it takes them away from the picturesque settings of provincial Kurashiki.

Beniko’s mother was fond of saying that there was a deity of waiting in the town, and there is a white-clad figure perhaps visible only to Kyon-kun who follows the youngsters around and looks on cheerfully as if embodying the sense of fun and warmth that lingers in the city. Kurashiki does indeed look like a nice place to live with its continual sunniness and traditional architecture though as someone points out that’s largely because the bombers flew past here and hit somewhere else instead. Fireworks are as apparent disruptor but eventual healer Kojo says a way of bringing people together, a source of joy happiness even amid difficult times just as they were during the pandemic. There’s something quite wholesome and comforting about the way the whole community comes together to make Kyon-kun’s dream come true, overcoming the obvious objections of the powers that be that it’s not a good idea to have a fireworks festival in a town that’s almost entirely constructed in wood to create a small marvel of human kindness and solidarity. It’s this that finally allows Beniko to remake her family, giving it her own light and colour while keeping a place for her mother having come to an acceptance of why she couldn’t stay and a conviction that she will one day return when she too has begun to heal her heart.

The Tales of Kurashiki screened as part of this year’s Osaka Asian Film Festival.

Trailer (no subtitles)