The Best is Yet to Come (不止不休, Wang Jing, 2020)

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A man denied a fair chance in life because of his impoverished background comes to identify with the plight of those carrying the hepatitis B virus in Wang Jing’s true life drama, The Best is Yet to Come (不止不休, bùzhǐ bùxiū). Inspired by the story of Han Fudong, a journalist who exposed the societal prejudice against those with a previous diagnosis of the disease, the film’s Chinese title “no pause no rest” makes clear how tirelessly he strived to reveal the truth even at the potential cost of destroying his dream of becoming a professional reporter. 

Han Dong (Bai-Ke) came to Beijing in 2003 in the hope of landing a job at a paper, but just like everywhere else journalism is a largely closed profession almost impossible to break into without elite qualifications and connections. At a jobs fair, Han Dong tries to pass off his reluctance to hand over a CV as a recruitment tactic to get people to remember him, circulating copies of his portfolio instead though recruiters quickly lose interest on realising they are all self-published articles posted online. Once he admits that he only finished middle school, it’s game over no matter how talented a writer and investigator he may turn out to be. 

It’s this sense of unfairness, of being turned away on the grounds of a few words on a piece of paper that eventually leads him to sympathise with those carrying the hepatitis B virus after investigating a company that claims it buys blood, discovering that they provide a service helping people to forge health certificates for job and school applications. Vox pop-style interviews recreated in the manner of the time feature several people describing the various ways their lives have been ruined simply because they happen to carry the virus, many of them infected since birth or early childhood. One man has been trying to apply for jobs and graduate schools for several years but finds the offers are always withdrawn after the health screening, while another woman recounts that her fiancé cancelled their engagement because his family could not accept someone with hepatitis B. 

This is also in the immediate aftermath of the SARS epidemic which perhaps caused a preoccupation with infectious disease which may be largely unfounded in the relative difficulty of passing on the hepatitis B virus. After landing a golden opportunity of an unpaid internship compensated only with 50% article fees, Han Dong finds himself conflicted. He knows the forgery operation is illegal and a threat to public health, but also cannot blame the people who make use of it when their lives have been rendered so impossible that is difficult for them simply to live. An early assignment had seen him cover a mine collapse and witness a destraught mother bounced into accepting compensation for her son’s death while shouted at by the foreman (played by film director Jia Zhangke who also produced) for having the temerity to ask to see his body. Han Dong got a front-page byline as co-author with his mentor figure, Huang (Zhang Songwen), but wonders what the point is if nothing ever changes and the truth is not enough on its own. 

For obvious reasons, films about crusading journalists are rare in Chinese cinema given that whistleblowing is not regarded as a virtue and those who try to expose wrongdoing are often shouted down or hounded into silence as seen with the doctor who drew attention to the poor medical practices in rural blood clinics that caused an HIV epidemic in farming communities, and most recently with the physician who tried to raise awareness of the new respiratory illness that later developed into a global pandemic. Journalists who report problematic stories can also find themselves facing prosecution and imprisonment. Han Fudong’s writings did however lead to an eventual change in the law and the destigmatisation of hepatitis B while he himself overcame the educational elitism of the contemporary society to achieve his dreams of becoming a professional reporter. As such, Wang’s dramatisation of his life may be in a way subversive if subtly so in hinting at a greater role for a currently not so free press in the modern China while also embracing a central philosophy that one need not simply accept an unacceptable status quo but actively reject and challenge it and that by doing so something might actually change. 

The Best is Yet to Come screens in Chicago Sept. 30 as part of the 17th season of Asian Pop-Up Cinema 

International trailer (English subtitles)

Ripples (波紋, Naoko Ogigami, 2023)

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Sometimes it’s useful to feel like a rock in the stream and let it all flow past us, but our actions affect others in ways we barely understand reverberating and rebounding until ripples become waves and in their time small tsunamis. In Naoko Ogigami’s Ripples (波紋, Hamon), the effects of the 2011 earthquake and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster continue to radiate while some find themselves reeling unable to reorient themselves in a world which has become somehow threatening. 

Middle-aged salaryman Osamu (Ken Mitsuishi) suddenly disappears on his wife and teenage son after becoming intensely afraid of radiation only to return years later claiming that he has cancer. In his absence his wife, Yoriko (Mariko Tsutsui), has become a devotee of a strange cult, Green New Life, which peddles special purifying water and preaches otherwise wholesome virtues of solidarity and sacrifice. But even if Yoriko superficially agrees that it’s better to affect tolerance and put others before herself she’s secretly seething with frustration and resentment. She clearly does not want to take Osamu back, remembering how he left her to care for his bedridden father who knowingly or not made inappropriate sexual advances towards her. 

The cult’s anthem preaches that there is no fear if you have faith which might explain Yoriko’s devotion along with that of many others who similarly find themselves attracted to new religions in the wake of unsettling events such as natural disaster or global pandemic. But then can we really say that what the cult promises is any different to that of other organisations which at least portray themselves as scientific authorities. It transpires that the real reason Osamu has returned is that his doctor has recommended an experimental new treatment that is not covered by medical insurance and costs a significant amount of money but all Osamu has to go on is desperation and his faith in the medical establishment that the supposed cure is any more effective than Yoriko’s holy water (it turns out not to be). There is after all a lot of money in fear and people’s desire to be free of it. 

But Yoriko is afraid of many things. Her petty prejudices are exposed when her now grownup son returns home on a business trip with a hitherto undisclosed fiancée in tow who happens to be deaf. Yoriko probably would not have liked it anyway whoever Takuya (Hayato Isomura) had brought but resolutely fails to hide her disgust that he chosen a woman with a disability. She remarks that people at the church find inspiration in seeing disabled people “suffer and endure”, which is a fairly offensive thing to say in any case even if she later confesses his prejudice outright to a colleague at the supermarket where she works claiming that it’s different because it’s her son and she doesn’t see why he had to choose a woman “like that”. While the cult leader pushes her towards what are superficially at least more wholesome values of love and acceptance, Mizuki (Hana Kino) pulls her back towards her darker impulses but also a kind of liberation in her desire not to be bound by the old-fashioned conservative values that encourage her to fulfil the stereotype of the perfect wife over and above her own happiness or fulfilment. 

The dryness of her life is echoed in the zen sand garden she meticulously rakes into the shape of waves each morning while the water many feared contaminated after the earthquake is really a symbol of the life and vitality she continues to deny herself. Yet in an odd way, it’s human connection that perhaps begins to awaken her in her devotion to Mizuki who reveals that she was so overwhelmed with despair that she became unable to fix the damage in her apartment after the quake struck and has been living amid the ruins ever since. Ogigami turns her quirky gaze to life’s absurdities, the ridiculous things we cling to in order not to be afraid, but eventually allows Yoriko to find the courage to dance in the rain rather than fear its arrival having blown straight through her various “faiths” to become something that is at least more resolutely herself. 

Ripples screened as part of this year’s Camera Japan.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Creation of the Gods I: Kingdom of Storms (封神第一部：朝歌风云, Wuershan, 2023)

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A bad ruler, like a bad father, has only bad lessons to teach his sons and will receive the same in kind in Wuershan’s beautifully produced fantasy epic, Creation of the Gods 1: Kingdom of Storms (封神第一部：朝歌风云, Fēng Shén Dìyī Bù: Zhāogē Fēngyún). Inspired by the classic work of 16th century literature also known as Investiture of the Gods which serves as a kind of foundation myth, the film is the first of three and a 10-year labour of love from the director that began shooting in 2018 and took nearly four years to complete post-production. 

As the opening title card explains, the film focusses on the fall of the Shang dynasty at the hands of its last king and King of All the Realms Yin Shou (Fei Xiang), known posthumously as King Zhou. He is first introduced, however, through the eyes of the young man that is really the hero of the tale, Ji Fa (Yu Shi), who describes him as a hero of the kind he dreams of becoming. Yin Shou is charged with leading an attack on the compound of rebellious lord Su Hu who has refused to pay his taxes, taking with him the four hostage foster sons of the primary dukes along with that of Su Hu himself. The boy is sent to plead with him but gets no reply. In a show of what seems like kindness, Yin Shou asks him what sort of father his must be to give no reply and formally adopts the boy but only in the knowledge that honour dictates he now take his own life as proof of his loyalty to the Shang. 

These young men, Ji Fa included, are forced to ask themselves to whom they owe their loyalty, a man who gave them up and may long have forgotten them or Yin Shou who has in a sense raised them and demands their loyalty. Ji Fa is fiercely loyal to Yin Shou and thinks him everything a good father, a good commander and eventually king should be. Yet Yin Shou has extremely strong second son syndrome and resents his father and older brother for treating him as an also ran. Ji Fa meanwhile is still naive and egotistical, coming to the palace dreaming of becoming “a hero” with only a superficial understanding of what that would mean and easily swayed by Yin Shou’s majesty while Yin Shou in turn rejects his own son ironically fearful of him as a rival having watched the old king die at the hands of his brother while privately pleased that he will finally take his rightful place on the throne only to be told that the kingdom is in peril and the only way to save it is to commit public self-immolation. 

When the legendary heroes Jiang Ziya (Huang Bo), Nezha (Wu Yafan), and Yang Jian (Cisha) turn up with a magic scroll that can undo the Great Curse bearing down on the land, Yin Shou describes it as blessing on realising the talisman gains in power the more souls it receives. There may be something a little chilling the contemporary echoes of his paranoid authoritarianism as he actively begins to round up subversive elements even as he takes as a mistress the daughter of a man he beheaded who in reality took her own life and has been possessed by a fox spirit though it is also quite ironic that it is Su Daji (Narana Erdyneeva) who will bring down the Shang. 

In any case, Wuershan brings the classic tale to life with a sense of magic and wonder painstakingly recreating the fantasy world of feudal China with its beautiful landscapes marred by chaotic infighting and destabilised by dysfunctional filiality. In the end, Ji Fa will return to his true father and with him the path of righteousness which will overcome the Great Curse and begin to restore order laying the foundations for the Chinese society. Meanwhile, in this age of demons and strange creatures, interventions from the heavens and the mortal world in so much chaos that Nezha has been brought in to help, Wuershan discovers a kind of soulfulness embracing the timeless quality of this ancient mythological tale yet grounding it in a well honed sense of emotional reality.

Creation of the Gods I: Kingdom of Storms is in UK cinemas now courtesy of CineAsia.

Trailer (Simplified Chinese / English sutbtitles)

Seven Days in Heaven (父後七日, Essay Liu & Wang Yu-Lin, 2010)

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A young woman embarks on what she describes as the most ridiculous journey of her life after her father passes away and she must return to her hometown for a series of incredibly involved traditional funeral rites in Essay Liu and Wang Yu-Lin ’s lighthearted drama Seven Days in Heaven (父後七日, fù hòu qī rì). Perhaps the intent is more to keep the mourners occupied in a slow burn dissolve of their grief than it is to console a parting soul but in any case Mei finds herself meditating on the past and her already fading memories of her late father. 

The strangeness begins at the hospital where Mei (Wang Li-Wen) and her brother Da-zhi (Chen Cha-Shiang) are repeatedly asked to explain to their father, who has just died, that they are taking him home. In the transport ambulance they ask if the family is Buddhist or Christian, and then simplify the question to whether they use incense sticks when a confused Mei is uncertain how to answer though as it turns out the rites they will be performing are largely Taoist. Anyway, the driver accidentally puts in the wrong tape and they get a blast of the Hallelujah chorus before he switches over to a series of sutras instead. A similar confusion sets in once they arrive back at the house where the funeral is being managed by a distant relative who works as a Taoist priest performing rituals largely concerned with death. 

A running gag sees these familial relationships so tangled that they need lengthy explanations, Yi (Wu Peng-Fong) the priest explaining to Mei’s cousin Zhuang (Chen Tai-hua) that he should have been calling him “brother” and not “uncle” while as it turns out Yi still carries a torch for Zhuang’s mother, Feng (Angie Wang), who left him to work in another town and married a wealthy man. Currently in Paris, she does not return for her father’s funeral and sends her son instead who is equally mystified by these strange rituals and decides to film them as part of a university project. 

Yi consults some religious calendars and schedules the days of the funeral accordingly from when they close the coffin to when they conduct the final rites with Mei and Da-zhi merely expected to keep up. A detached Mei explains that as the daughter she’s explicitly instructed when to cry and when not to, forced to run in and wail by the coffin on cue. Yi’s partner, Chin (Chang Shih-Ying), herself works as a professional mourner wailing on the behalf of others merely altering the identity of the deceased but in this case the siblings are alternately bored and run ragged, possibly too exhausted by the process of mourning to fully process their grief. 

Zhuang’s film exposes the labour involved as he closes in Da-zhi explaining that he has to sweep up the ashes from the burning of ghost money. He asks him how he feels about his father’s death which might in itself be a little insensitive especially while pointing a camera in his face and he snaps back that he doesn’t know. Mei meanwhile is repeatedly drawn back to memories of her father, picking out a picture of him singing karaoke for the altar only to be told off by the older relatives. Zhuang eventually photoshops it to replace the mic with flowers and the background with a more appropriate scene of mountains and rivers. She doesn’t tell her friends her father passed away until months later and still finds herself forgetting, brought to tears on accidentally reminding herself to pick up some “longevity” cigarettes for him on a trip back from abroad only to realise there’s no need anymore. “Please stow your emotions” she imagines hearing the captain say in her father’s voice as she strives to accommodate her grief. 

Filled with a series of humorous digressions from Yi’s love life and their late father’s ability to charm his nurses even at death’s door, the film paints a warm and nostalgic portrait of small-town life and the various rituals that go along with it, including a small tangent on political corruption as a host of politicians are obliged to attend the funeral, because of the aforementioned ill-defined familial relationships, and send elaborate gifts including a large tower of beer cans that later collapses and requires even more tiding up. Finally the siblings must burn their mourning clothes as if symbolically moving on from their seven says in “heaven” and returning to their everyday lives but discover perhaps that grief is an ongoing process the rituals of which may continue long after the funeral is finished.

Seven Days in Heaven is available to stream in the US Sept. 25 to Oct.1 as part of the 17th season of Asian Pop-Up Cinema.

Trailer (English subtitles)

The Dry Spell (渇水, Masaya Takahashi, 2023)

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A literal drought becomes a metaphor for bureaucratic heartlessness in Masaya Takahashi’s empathetic social drama The Dry Spell (渇水, Kassui). Inspired by Mitsuru Kawabayashi’s 1990 novel, the film puts a contemporary spin on prejudice and poverty as a collection of officials from the waterboard point at airconditioners and mobile phones while asking why the residents have fallen into arrears with their water payments only to reflect that yes, water like air and sunlight should be free.

The argument that one of Iwakiri’s (Toma Ikuta) colleagues makes, is that they have a right and a duty to charge for the water supply to support the nation’s infrustructure along with their advanced purifcation system which keeps people safe. Iwakiri isn’t so sure about that, but as others later say of him he’s a man who’s made of water himself. He doesn’t like his job but he doesn’t really dislike it either and justifies himself that it’s not him turning people’s water off so much as it’s a natural consequence of them not paying their bills and all they need to do to get it turned back on is settle them. But then as another colleague who eventually refuses to continue cutting people off suggests, every time you do it you lose a little piece of your soul. 

Iwakiri may not have had much of a soul to begin with. He’s as dried up as the town in the middle of a recordbreaking drought and heatwave. Having endured a difficult childhood, he’s become alienated from his wife and son who have decamped to her hometown with no clear indication of when or if they’ll return. That may be one reason he finds himself empathsithig with a pair of sisters who have been abandoned by both parents and are living alone in a house that has already had its gas and electricity supplies cut off. Iwakiri turns off their water supply because it’s the rules, but begins to hate himself for doing it and develops a desire to go against the flow for the first time in his life.

Keiko (Nanami Yamazaki) and Kumiko (Yuzuho) are a pair of water babies who have a yearning for the sea and the father who was apparently once a sailor but seemingly disappeared a year previously while their disappointed mother does her best to support the family through sex work which is as she points out the only line of work open to a single mother with limited qualifications. Iwakiri advises her to apply for benefits but she refuses on the grounds that she doesn’t want them poking around in what she describes as a complicated family situation which makes plain her predicament. But even as Iwakiri begins to meditate on his own paternal failures, his partner Kida (Hayato Isomura) flows in the opposite direction keener to hold onto his job after he learns he’s a baby on the way and unwilling to rock the boat despite how much he may also feel that water should be free. 

In any case, Iwakiri is trying to un-dam himself, waiting for the great big rain that Kumiko says will make everything go back to normal. Except it won’t, at least not literally  though it will in some senses open the flood gates liberating Iwakiri from his emotional repression and the girls from their illusions accepting that they are now alone but will always have each other. As he points out, they are just watermen and there’s not much they can do for the struggling people whose supplies they’ve cut off. It wouldn’t help to pay their bills for them even if they could, and in a better world water should indeed be free though it becomes much harder for them to justify their complicity with a heartless system that can arbitrarily remove access to something so essential for life. Takahashi flits between cheerful scenes of ice lollies in the sun to the cruel realities of the lives of Keiko and Kumiko who continue to long for the sea as does Iwakiri in struggling to repair his relationships with his wife and son while trying to escape the legacies of own traumatic upbringing. The film doesn’t offer any easy answers, but does perhaps suggest that the rain will bring change and the promise of a better future.

The Dry Spell screened as part of this year’s Camera Japan.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

The Guard From Underground (地獄の警備員, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 1992)

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Ever feel like your job is trying to kill you? Released at the tail end of the Bubble era, Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s The Guard from Underground (地獄の警備員, Jigoku no Keibin) positions an office building as an industrial hell complete with a demon living in the basement but grimly suggests it’s just one of many hazards to be aware of for a woman in the corporate environment. Then again, the hellish guard himself has a sorrowful look in his eyes that speaks of true loneliness and might evoke pity if only in the fatalistic inevitability of his office-bound killing spree. 

It has to be said, Akebono Trading should have another look at its hiring procedures through in any case there’s something odd about this building which feels more like an abandoned hospital than a place of business while we might also wonder why we’re seeing signs for cargo depots and engine rooms and staff getting locked in the filing room is apparently not an uncommon occurrence. The new security guard has the same name as a former sumo wrester acquitted of the murders of his stablemate and lover on the grounds of temporary insanity, Fujimaru (Yutaka Matsushige), and is himself a hulking presence, tall but of medium build so who knows if it’s really the same guy or just the office rumour mill going into overdrive.  

Meanwhile, the other new recruit is a refined young woman, Akiko (Makiko Kuno), who’s been brought on as an art expert to help a new division recently diverted into prospecting with art sales to assess what is and isn’t a fair market price for a priceless piece of art. As Akiko admits, she’s not well placed to give that information because her background is in curation so she’s not particularly well versed in the collector market but presumably the job pays a bit better than the museums sector so she’s trying to do her best. Her new boss, Kurume (Ren Osugi), is a bit of a weirdo (like all the other men in the building) and crassly remarks that paintings like women have no value if there’s no buyer while she struggles to understand what the point of her job is. Meanwhile we’re left to wonder if Section 12 is actually a real department at all or a shady enterprise set up to help the enigmatic boss, Hyodo (Hatsunori Hasegawa), improve his investment portfolio which will probably serve him well when the bubble finally bursts. 

It’s tempting to read Fujimaru as a personification of corporate culture slowly picking off the employees and largely doing so by means of the building itself, electrocuting them by forcing their hand on the circuit breaker, bashing one inside a locker, or otherwise using his security guard’s truncheon to bludgeon them to death. To begin with, it seems as if he’s developed a fondness for Akiko and while that may be true in the same way King Kong develops a fondness for Fay Wray, it soon becomes clear that he isn’t in fact trying to protect her by taking out all the skeevy guys but seemingly killing for no reason. He looks a painting of Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Son with fascination, again hinting at his nature as the personification of capitalistic corporatism devouring the employees who might one day overthrow him, yet also lends the guard an eerie, mystical quality suggesting he merely enjoys the act of carnage though he does not actually eat anyone (that we see). More than that he seems almost like Frankenstein’s Monster, somehow lonely in identifying his otherness as he eventually confesses to Akiko remarking that “desolate time” flows through him unlike her “kind”. As he leaves, he pleads not to be forgotten. 

Akiko defeats him by refusing to believe his story and declaring herself disinterested in his truth possibly stood in good stead by the constant necessity of evading the attentions of the men around her such as those of Kurume who starts off giving paternalistic advice about looking after her parents and the preferential savings rates on post office accounts before randomly taking off his trousers. Anticipating his later career, Kurosawa makes the office a place of lurking dread and anxious eeriness only deepened by its industrial aesthetics along with the tiny windows leaking apocalyptic lighting from the oblivious outside world now cut off except for the new/old teletype text and ironic benefits of international time zones. “Traffic’s hell this time of day” a taxi driver chirpily advises, ironically delivering his passenger straight into its fiery depths. 

The Guard From Underground is released in the UK on blu-ray on 25th September courtesy of Third Window Films.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Camera Japan Announces Complete Programme for 2023

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Camera Japan returns for its 18th edition in Rotterdam 21st to 24th September and in Amsterdam 28th September to 1st October bringing with it another fantastic selection of the best in recent and not so recent Japanese cinema.

Feature Films

  • #Manhole – a salaryman’s moment of triumph is disrupted when he falls down a manhole the night before his wedding in Kazuyoshi Kumakiri’s unhinged B-movie thriller. Review.
  • Baby Assassins 2 Babies – the Baby Assassins are back and continuing to struggle with the demands of adulting in Yugo Sakamoto’s sequel to the hugely popular slacker action comedy. Review.
  • Bad Lands -fast paced crime thriller from Masato Harada starring Sakura Ando as a conwoman in over her head.
  • Baian the Assassin, M.D. 1 – period drama starring Etsushi Toyokawa as the famous acupuncturist hitman.
  • Cafune – a pair of teenagers with differing priorities struggle to deal with the discovery of an unplanned pregnancy in Haruki Kinemura’s evenhanded indie drama. Review.
  • December – bereaved parents are confronted by the unresolved past when the woman who killed their daughter appeals her sentence in Anshul Chauhan’s empathetic courtroom drama. Review.
  • The Dry Spell – drama starring Toma Ikuta as a municipal worker charged with turning off the water supply at homes that haven’t paid their bills.
  • Egoist – a fashion editor reflects on the nature of love after falling for a personal trainer in Daishi Matsunaga’s deeply moving romantic drama. Review.
  • Firing the Lighter Gun – indie drama set after a nuclear disaster.
  • I Am What I Am – a young woman uninterested in sexual relationships struggles to find acceptance in a conservative society defined by marriage in Shinya Tamada’s empathetic drama. Review.
  • Is this Heaven? – a middle-aged couple ponder loss and regret on a surreal odyssey into the afterlife , or something like it at least, in Shinji Imaoka’s cheerfully absurdist dramedy. Review.
  • Life of Mariko in Kabukicho – surreal drama from Eiji Uchida & Shinzo Katayama starring Sairi Ito as a bar owner/detective charged with hunting down a missing alien.
  • Love Will Tear Us Apart – eccentric indie slasher scripted by Hirobumi Watanabe and directed by Kenichi Ugana.
  • MAYHEM GIRLs – pandemic-era drama in which a group of high school girls suddenly develop superpowers.
  • Mondays: See You ‘This’ Week! – harried office workers must get through to their dejected salaryman boss if they’re to escape a workplace time loop in Ryo Takebayashi’s zany corporate comedy. Review.
  • Mountain Woman – a young woman walks into the mountains to die but unexpectedly discovers what it is to feel truly human in Takeshi Fukunaga’s bleak folk tale. Review.
  • A Mother’s Touch – real life drama inspired by the life of Satoshi Fukushima who became the world’s first deaf-blind university professor.
  • Natchan’s Little Secret – comedic road trip drama in which three drag queens travel to their friend’s funeral.
  • New Religion – supernatural horror in which a woman struggles to deal with her grief following the death of her daughter.
  • Ninja vs Shark – B-movie action drama from Koichi Sakamoto ini which a small feudal town is bothered by a giant shark and a gang of satan-worshipping bandits.
  • People Who Talk to Plushies Are Kind – A collection of sensitive uni students pour out their worries to cuddly toys to avoid burdening others with their fears in Yurina Kaneko’s charmingly empathetic drama. Review.
  • Perfect Days – Tokyo-set tale from Wim Wenders starring Koji Yakusho as cleaner living a simple but soulful life.
  • Remembering Every Night – a series of women wander around Tama New Town each searching for something in Yui Kiyohara’s wistful drama. Review.
  • The Rest of Our Lives – drama following three elderly people who become friends at a swimming club.
  • Ripples – latest from Naoko Ogigami starring Mariko Tsutsui as a housewife who joins a weird water-themed cult after her husband leaves her in the wake of natural disaster.
  • Sabakan – heartwarming nostalgia drama in which a struggling writer looks back to the summer of 1986.
  • Suncream and Windchimes – whimsical drama in which a paranoid husband begins spying on his wife.
  • Tea Friends – empathetic drama from Bunji Sotoyama in which a collection of elderly people are drawn into a sex ring in order to stave off loneliness and poverty.
  • Tocka – a trio of lost souls battle despair in northernmost Hokkaido in Yoshitaka Kamada’s bleak social drama. Review.
  • Tsugaru Lacquer Girl – a young woman encounters resistance in her desire to take over the family lacquerware business.
  • Your Lovely Smile – Hirobumi Watanabe stars as a version of himself but this time for Lim Kah-Wai as the pair come together in shared sensibly and frustration with the indie way of life. Review.
  • Yudo – Toma Ikuta stars as a failed Tokyo architect returning to his home town with the intention of getting control of the family bathhouse currently run by his brother (Gaku Hamada) to tear it down and build an apartment block in this warmhearted celebration of traditional bathhouse culture.

Animation

  • Blue Thermal – a young woman ends up in the university gliding club but discovers a new passion.
  • Gold Kingdom and Water Kingdom – after centuries of conflict, two feuding countries finally begin to put the past behind them to work for a common future in Kotono Watanabe’s animated fantasy romance. Review.
  • Komada: A Whisky Family – a young woman takes over the family whisky business after her father’s death.
  • Macross Plus – classic 1995 mecha anime.

Documentary

  • Origami – documentary following artist Atsushi Suwa as he creates a portrait of a deceased young man.
  • Polan – documentary charting the final days of a second-hand bookshop.
  • The Night Before Upheaval – documentary exploring the difficulties faced by indie filmmakers in Japan.
  • UMUI – Guardians of Traditions – documentary focussing on traditional music and dance in Okinawa.

Special Screenings

  • The Oldest Profession – 1974 Roman Porno from Noboru Tanaka.
  • Priest of Darkness – a feckless gambler brings trouble on himself by accidentally stealing a samurai’s knife and hides out in a tavern run by a “priest” while his sister (a young Setsuko Hara) desperately searches for him.
  • Spaghetti Ramen – avant-garde live action/animation hybrid in which a restauranteur lusts after his wife who has become a sex worker to make ends meet.
  • Tange Sazen and the Pot Worth a Million Ryo – a priceless pot containing a treasure map is accidentally given away and later used as a goldfish bowl by a child who is taken in by a tavern frequented by one-eyed, one-armed swordsman Tange Sazen while seemingly everyone else is desperately trying to find it.
  • Tokyo Pop – 1988 classic following a young American woman in Tokyo.

Camera Japan 2023 takes place in Rotterdam 21st to 24th September and Amsterdam 28th September to 1st October. Full information on all the films as well as ticketing links can be found on the official website and you can also keep up to date with all the latest news via Camera Japan’s official Facebook page, X (formerly known as Twitter) account, and Instagram channel.

Gangnam Zombie (강남좀비, Lee Soo-sung, 2023)

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A struggling YouTuber takes on sexism, classism and the zombie apocalypse in Lee Soo-sung’s office-bound horror Gangnam Zombie (강남좀비). Lee apparently chose the title to appeal to international audiences hoping to cash in on the cachet of Gangnam Style and the film does have a made for export aesthetic, but even so it tackles some of the ills of contemporary Korea from work-based sexual harassment to the difficulties of getting a foot in the door in media and calls from your mother asking you to go home and farm melons with her rather than hang around failing to make it Seoul. 

For all that, however, Hyun-seok (Ji Il-joo) is a fairly cheerful man actually quite excited about asking his colleague Min-jeong (Park Ji-yeon ) out to a Christmas concert even if voices on the radio warn that we’re not so much living in a post-pandemic world as with a virus that could easily mutate again and there’s no telling when the next great pathogen may arise to kill us all off for good. This is essentially what the film suggests the zombie virus is, though the implication that it was shipped in from China may be in fairly poor taste along with the immediate allusion to the first cases of COVID-19 in Wuhan in 2019. In any case, patient zero acquires the virus from a zombie cat apparently trapped inside a container vessel he was in the middle of robbing and then goes on to kill his accomplice. 

Meanwhile the film devotes much of its time to the travails of Hyun-seok who is accosted by the landlady of the building where his office is because his boss is way behind on their rent while Hyun-seok counters he hasn’t been paid for three months either. The boss is also sexually harassing Min-jeong but she feels she can’t say anything because it was difficult for her to get this job and she’s worried about being blacklisted if people find out she reported her harassment. Hyun-seok had run into her outside work standing up for two women against to two chauvinistic men who’d apparently tried to use a date rape drug on one only her friend had noticed and saved her. Min-jeong feels confident standing up to them, citing the law to prove her point, but has mixed feelings when Hyun-seok intervenes pointing out that if they get lawyers it could be him going to jail not them. 

But then again, the law’s not much use in a zombie apocalypse. Hyun-seok is also a reserve member of the national Taekwondo team which is certainly a handy skill to have, but it’s also true that he sometimes ironically falls into a sexist hero mode in his desire to protect Min-jeong even if he does teach her a few moves she can use against both zombies and sleazy bosses allowing her to hold her own and in fact save him on more than one occasion. Meanwhile they are both saddled with the snooty landlady who is forever complaining that “the poor” have no manners, sense of responsibility, or inclination to save up for things while insisting no one call the police because it’ll lower the property prices and she’s trying to sell the building. It might be tempting to see her as an embodiment of a rabidly capitalist society consuming its workers and turning them into mindless, flesh-hungry drones if it weren’t perhaps also true that the film is not all that sympathetic about Hyun-seok’s failure to make it as a YouTuber. Perhaps he ought to listen to his mother and go home to farm melons after all. 

Lee does his best with a limited budget, as Hyun-seok and Min-jeong desperately try to escape the corporate prison of the office building to seek freedom and safety outside but largely saves the zombie action for the climactic final sequences in returning to the film’s opening while otherwise focussing on Hyun-seok’s romantic diffidence and the problematic atmosphere in his moribund live-streaming office. But then again it seems to say that just because you got away once doesn’t mean you’re safe or the aggressors of a dog eat dog society won’t necessarily wake back up when you least expect it to embody the city once again consuming those who cannot escape it with increasingly bloody violence. 

Gangnam Zombie is released in the US on Digital, DVD, and blu-ray on Sept. 26 courtesy of Well Go USA.

International trailer (English subtitles)

Where Is the Lie? (Marupok AF, Quark Henares, 2023)

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What is it that motivates acts of seemingly pointless cruelty, why do people obsessively waste their own lives trying to make those of others miserable? Quark Henares’ inspired by real events (depending on who you ask) catfishing drama Where is the Lie? (Marupok AF) sees a trans woman fall victim to homophobic love fraud amid a climate of intense transphobia and subsequently make the decision to take a stand not as a petty act of revenge but to reclaim her dignity and protect her community while generously wishing her tormentor well. 

The catfisher, Beanie (Maris Racal), is given the right to reply through a series of confessional videos which slowly gain prominence towards the film’s conclusion. She admits that she knows what she did but does not really understand why she did it save justifying herself that she’s been “bullied” by members of the LGBTQ+ community in the past. She deliberately mangles the acronym and makes a point of using male pronouns to refer to the trans woman she’s currently targeting, Janzen (EJ Jallorina), but later starts to slip up instinctively using “she” after spending months talking to her normally over a dating app posing as buff model Theo (Royce Cabrera). Asked what the point of all this is, Beanie doesn’t have much of an answer beyond the cruelty itself explaining that the end goal is simply to ghost the target once they’ve made an emotional connection to cause them to feel hurt or humiliated. Perhaps these seem like low level consequences to Beanie who regards the catfishing as something like a weird hobby though one she expends an immense amount of time on seeing as she doesn’t appear to have anything else going on in her life aside from her actual job as a video director working in the fashion industry. 

The strange thing is though is Beanie describes Janzen as fun to talk to and they even seem to strike up a genuine connection over their shared interest in design. Beanie then finds herself in dilemma, simultaneously accelerating the plan to avoid having to deal with her complicated feelings but then restarting it after its natural end point by inserting herself into the conversation posing as Theo’s cousin and apologising on his behalf for his treatment of her in a moment of panic. The implication is that Beanie’s behaviour is motivated by an internalised homophobia in which she cannot bear to admit her desire for other women keeping her connection with Janzen because she is attracted to her but simultaneously denying it through a deliberate attempt to cause her pain and humiliation in returning her feelings vicariously through the fake Theo persona.

Some may feel that the film to too sympathetic towards outward transphobe Beanie or that once again implying the villain is closeted is unhelpful, but there may be something in her claims to be a kind of victim too in that her internalised homophobia is caused by societal conservatism in a largely Catholic, patriarchal culture. The film is clear on the dangers and discrimination Janzen faces daily both online and off as her friends remark on the case of a trans woman being arrested for using the ladies’ bathroom and later TV news footage shows president Duterte pardoning a US soldier who had been convicted of murdering a transgender sex worker. As the film begins, Janzen’s boyfriend breaks up with her over his discomfort about publicly dating a trans woman, implying that he is ashamed or embarrassed in his inability to explain the relationship to his older conservative parents. An online date then goes south when he realises she is trans. As her friends tell her Theo seems too good to be true especially as his social media only contains professionally taken photos and no personal posts or connections but Janzen is blinded by love and deeply wants to believe that the relationship is “real”.

That might go someway to explaining why she puts up with so much nonsense from Theo and continues to interact with him even after he calls her a series of slur words, leaves her waiting at the airport for a fake meeting, and then dumps her in a Jollibee after convincing her to travel all the way to Manila knowing she has no return ticket or place to stay. Playing out almost like an incredibly perverse Cyrano de Bergerac, the film at times pushes Janzen into the background in favour of exploring Beanie’s motivations for her seemingly senseless, sadistic cruelty, but subsequently allows her to reclaim centrestage in owning her own story by taking a stand against transphobic bullying on behalf of the other victims and her wider community while very much claiming the moral high ground by wishing Beanie nothing but peace though whether she’ll ever find it is anybody’s guess. 

Where Is the Lie? screened as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival. 

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Images: © Anima Studios, Kroma Entertainment, December 2022.© 2022 Kroma Entertainment. All Rights Reserved

Harvest Moon (Эргэж ирэхгүй намар, Amarsaikhan Baljinnyam, 2022)

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A young man who left for the city is forced to reckon with his childhood self and the nature of paternity when called back to his rural home in Amarsaikhan Baljinnyam’s touching directorial debut Harvest Moon (Эргэж ирэхгүй намар). The melancholy title may hint at the short-lived nature of the central relationship but also reflects the slowly disappearing traditional culture of the Mongolian Steppe and the loneliness of those who find themselves in one way or another orphaned amid its vast and empty landscapes.

Tulgaa’s (Amarsaikhan Baljinnyam) dilemma is that he’s just received a voice message from a woman he’s been seeing explaining that she has a son she had not previously disclosed and wants to know if it’s a dealbreaker before the relationship becomes more serious. Meanwhile, he receives a call from his home village letting him know that the man who raised him, but was not actually his biological father, has been taken ill and may be close to death. Though reluctant, Tulgaa begins the long journey to say goodbye and then finds himself agreeing to stay a little longer to finish his father’s last harvest. 

While there, he meets a little boy, Tuntuulei (Tenuun-Erdene Garamkhand), who is like he was a child without a father though currently living with elderly grandparents while his mother works in the city. Older than his years, Tuntuulei too is bullied and ostracised by the other villagers who gossip and disapprove of the manner of his birth which apparently occurred after a one night stand. Neither Tulgaa nor Tuntuulei ever knew their biological fathers and are each looking for something to soothe their loneliness, eventually developing paternal relationship even in the knowledge that Tulgaa will return to the city once the harvest is done whether or not he eventually decides to accept becoming a father to his girlfriend’s son. 

In many ways Tulgaa is bonding with his childhood self and processing his paternal anxieties through the lonely, abandoned child he once was which is perhaps a little unfair given that he essentially taking a test run with Tuntuulei in preparation for becoming another boy’s father. Tuntuulei’s grandparents meanwhile contemplate sending him to the city to be with his mother, conscious that he’s bored with only the elderly couple for company and takes no interest in schooling. Tulgaa’s discovery that the boy cannot read provokes a rift between them in his insensitive reaction though Tuntuulei has already taught him a series of essential life skills for living on the Steppe from fishing to how to salve the blisters on his hands from cutting grass with a scythe. Tulgaa’s father had finally accepted that there was nothing he could have done to prevent him from leaving, but Tuntuulei seems so perfectly in tune with this landscape that it may not be possible for him to find happiness in the city even as this way of life continues to decline with other youngsters increasingly choosing urban civility over nomadic freedom.

As Tulgaa is eventually told, the age of harvesting by hand may be over as his stay in the village is quite literally cut short leaving Tuntuulei all alone a tiny figure amid heaps of drying grass. The once verdant field now seems sad and empty, a sign that autumn has arrived and not only for the two men but for the village as a whole. The film had opened with a group of men desperately trying to get a phone signal by attaching a mobile to a pole and standing on a horse, shouting up at the receiver and barely able to understand the reply. Tuntuulei suggests building tower so people could climb up and make a call whenever they want which in part symbolises his own desire for connection along with the community’s isolation from the outside world. But when he tries to use it himself he discovers only disappointment. After all this effort, his mother is too busy to speak to him and blithely asks that he call back later cruelly crushing his fantasy of being able to contact someone any time he wants and reinforcing his sense of aloneness. Even so through his relationship with Tulgaa who is after all an older version of himself he is able to find another connection which may endure even in its absence. Beautifully lensed to take advantage of the majesty of the Mongolian landscape, Amarsaikhan Baljinnyam’s poetic debut is a quietly affecting affair in its own way melancholy but also filled with warmth and a sense of future possibility.

Harvest Moon screens in Chicago Sept. 23 as part of the 17th season of Asian Pop-Up Cinema where Pinnacle Career Achievement honouree Amarsaikhan Baljinnyam is scheduled to attend the award ceremony before the film and Q&A after.  

Original trailer (English subtitles)