Tag: Osaka Asian Film Festival

Rainy Blue (レイニー ブルー, Asuna Yanagi, 2025)

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“You never know when it will end,” Aoi mutters to a concerned teacher. “The streaming period, and my life.” Asuna Yanagi’s Rainy Blue (レイニー ブルー) is a semi-autobiographical tale of a young woman figuring out how to live in the world while immersed in cinema. Her father may insist that she look at the reality, but Aoi’s world is already quite surreal even as she pours all her efforts into writing screenplays and watching films but otherwise floundering for direction.

To begin with, Aoi isn’t interested in cinema She just gets sent to see a film as punishment after getting caught setting off fireworks on the school roof because a local cinema has a special retrospective dedicated to actor Chishu Ryu who attended the same high school though probably 100 years previously. Despite scoffing at the idea and chuckling that everyone in the cinema is “old” while even the usher double checks to make sure she’s in the right place, Aoi is captivated by Ozu’s filmmaking and becomes a true convert to cinema to the extent that it completely takes over her life. She becomes the only member of the school’s film club, or as she’s find of reminding people “society”, and regularly turns up late after staying up all night watching movies. 

To that extent, Aoi’s film obsession may not quite be healthy in that it leads her to make some questionable decisions with unintended consequences, such as getting arrested for “stalking” people after following them around as research for her screenplays. She also finds out that one of her old friends, who is also her father’s favourite example of a “good” daughter, is into compensated dating and in reality perhaps just as lost as she is. Aoi’s father no longer understands her and has become authoritarian and unforgiving. He regularly berates and shouts at her while making no real attempt at communication. He simply asks why she can’t be “normal” and concentrate on going to uni like the other girls while complaining about how “embarrassed” he would be if she doesn’t go because it would reflect badly on him as a parent. 

Perhaps it’s not surprising that Aoi retreats into cinema to escape, but it’s also true that she finds a more supportive paternal presence in the guy at the cinema who turns out to have been a classmate of her mother’s. There’s a kind of poignancy in Aoi and her sister’s moment of confusion on realising that their mother was interested in films but they rarely watch them at home because her father doesn’t like them, while her mother rarely has time to go alone. Aoi’s love of cinemas as mediated by an old script she finds in the club room is also a way of connecting with her mother as a potentially more supportive parental figure in contrast to her father’s hardline authoritarianism.

But then, in her love of cinema Aoi is absolutely certain and she’s no reason why she should hide it from anyone else. Her best friend at school is rather bafflingly played by 43-year-old film director Hirobume Watanabe who dresses in a pre-war school uniform complete with student’s cap and little round glasses that make him look strangely like a Studio Ghibli character. Usami is an otaku with a love of anime he thinks he’s kept hidden despite having several anime badges on his backpack and is too afraid to be out and proud about it because he knows he’ll be bullied, which he eventually is when Aoi enters a deeper moment of crisis and more or less abandons him and the school. Watanabe also appears as a weirdly inspirational film director who has a go at an audience member at a q&a who asks him why his film is so nihilistic only for him to turn the question back on her and angrily insist that film can illuminate the way forward for those like Aoi who feel themselves to be lost. 

Thanks to all these strange adventures, her various friendships, and even her father’s animosity, Aoi eventually figures out what she wants to do with her life and gains the courage to go after it no matter what anyone else might say. Set in the picturesque environment of rural Kumamoto, the film’s gentle, laid-back aesthetic belies the storm at its centre and the rainy blue that surrounds the heroine until she too finally finds her way through the labyrinths of cinema.

Rainy Blue (レイニー ブルー, Asuna Yanagi, 2025) screened as part of this year’s Osaka Asian Film Festival.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

I Am Kirishima (桐島です, Banmei Takahashi, 2025)

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In early 2024, an elderly man made a shocking confession. He told members of the medical staff at the hospital where he was being treated that his name was actually “Satoshi Kirishima” and that he was a fugitive from justice wanted for the terrorist bombing of Mitsubishi Industries in 1974 that resulted in the deaths of eight people. Banmei Takahashi’s I Am Kirishima (桐島です, Kirishima desu) attempts to chart the course of his lifetime on the run but may prove controversial in the depths of its sympathy for a man who was party to this kind violence and to a degree found it justified even if he could not justify that his organisation threatened the lives of ordinary people rather than simply the infrastructure of companies they believed to be fuelling corporate imperialism.

Takashi has visited this era before with 2001’s Rain of Light which like Wakamatsu’s United Red Army readdressed the Asama-Sanso Incident and the failure of the student movement in early 1970s of which both directors had been a part. In February 1972, five members of the URA fleeing a purge inside the group holed up in a mountain lodge taking the innkeeper’s wife hostage. The event was one of the first news events in Japan to be broadcast live and its aftermath exposed the cult-like depths of violence and abuse to which the URA had descended forever the souring the nation as a whole on the idea of left-wing revolution. Meanwhile, the fragmentary groups that remained shifted further towards the extremes such completing bombing campaigns to disrupt the new capitalistic prosperity of the economic miracle. Kirishima and his cell believe these large conglomerates, such as Mitsubishi, to be enacting a new kind of Japanese imperialism through exploitative labour practices often targeting migrant workers in much the same way they made use of the forced labour of Korean and Chinese people trafficked to Japan during the colonial period.

To this extent, Kirishima justifies acts of terrorism but thinks they should avoid ordinary people getting caught up in the blast. The film is keen to cast him as “a man behind the times,” an foolish idealist who is exiled from the modern society because of his outdated beliefs in equality and fairness. As such, it lends an elegiac quality to the tragedy of his life in which his 50 years on the run weren’t all that much better than prison given that he had to live under an assumed identity, forever watching his back and unable to put down roots. A tentative romance with a singer-songwriter is hinted at, but Kirishima forgoes his romantic desires out of a feeling that it would be irresponsible to marry without being able to reveal his true self. 

But the film equally seems to drawn a parallel with contemporary Japan in Kirishima finds himself working alongside a middle school drop out with openly xenophobic views who makes frequent racist remarks such as implicating a co-worker when he’s taken to task for being late by insisting that it must be the other guy’s fault because he’s Korean and Koreans always lie. He also says that the migrant workers whom he claims are working illegally should be grateful to be exploited in Japan and can always go home if they don’t like it. It’s all a little too much for Kirishima who sacrificed his life for an ideal this boy repudiates while Japan has become a nation ruled by capitalism and exploitation with the labour revolution he dreamed of now a distant memory. Watching a Shinzo Abe press conference in which he discusses revising the constitution, Kirishima throws a beer can at the TV in frustration. His old comrade dies in prison leaving only a book of poetry behind, while another is released after serving his time though he obviously can’t make contact with him without risking his identity being exposed and getting picked up after all these years. 

Indeed, the film romanticises this image of Kirishima as a man from a bygone age in which another Japan was possible but did not and now presumably cannot come to pass. In doing so, it gives tacit approval to some of the actions of the extremist groups of the 1970s while simultaneously declaring the end of an era as a “case closed” card is placed over the cheerfully smiling face of a young Kirishima which had graced wanted posters all over the country for the last 50 years. His life itself becomes a failed revolution, but also kind of victory in which he managed to “beat” the police by remaining a fugitive all that time even if in the end he seems to regret the life he was prevented from living along with the isolation and loneliness of which he may now at last be free.

I Am Kirishima screened as part of this year’s Osaka Asian Film Festival.

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)

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)

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)

Memories of His Scent (においが眠るまで, Kahori Higashi, 2024)

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The link between scent and memory is incredibly strong to the extent that they are often inextricable from one another. For Hinoki, what she fears is that her father’s scent will fade from the world around her and she’ll no longer be able to feel his presence either externally or within herself. She tries to recapture and recreate it artificially only to realise that there was a crucial component that she never thought to include but was always central to her memories of her late father.

We can see the way she immortalises him in her dream sequence in which she walks through a gallery looking at a series of small exhibits marking out her father’s life until his hospitalisation at age 45 and subsequent death from illness. The last box appears empty but turns out to contain a simulacrum of his scent in the same way some museums offer the opportunity to experience what it may have felt like to live in a place through breathing in its ambient smells. It’s this sense of intimacy that Hinoki longs to recapture as she attempts to deal with her grief and the series of upheavals to her life in the wake of her father’s death including closing his coffee shop and bean roastery. She’s horrified that her mother’s put his favourite apron in the to go pile as if she were throwing away an essential part of him she can’t recover. It’s this along with a diary dropped off by the owner of a mini theatre he used to deliver coffee to that sends Hinoki on a summer holiday road trip adventure looking for traces of her father in the places he visited and trying to identify that behind a poetic entry at the end of the diary. 

The film then doubles as another in a series of films elegising the dying culture of boutique cinemas in small towns often catering to small but dedicated audiences who have formed a kind of community around their love of film. These smaller screens generally show older and indie films and are key to the success of independent filmmakers whose work often wouldn’t be shown in larger multiplexes, yet audiences have often not returned after the enforced break of the pandemic era while they also face competition from streaming and other forms of entertainment. The first cinema Hinoki visits is closing down in 42 days though she marvels at the scent and atmosphere of this retro space which has its own elegiac quality. Whilst there she also coincidentally runs to a scent scientist who gives her some pointers about how to preserve and recreate her father’s scent before it fades. By the time she reaches the end of her journey the final cinema has already closed down and rather depressingly been replaced by an entirely empty open air car park. 

Even so what she begins to realise is that nothing really disappears and experiences can be recreated to an extent as she discovers when they put a movie on in the car park leading to a very personal epiphany. The people she meets along her way teach her various things such as the importance of clearly stating how you feel while there’s still time even if her best friend’s attempt to do just that doesn’t quite go to plan. A single father raising a small daughter brings back painful memories for her of her own childhood and her father’s now continuing absence while also reminding her that those experiences live on in her memory along with the various things her father taught her throughout her life. 

Though suffused with melancholy, the film is ultimately uplifting in its determination that life goes on and nothing really disappears. Originally diffident and describing herself as someone who doesn’t particularly like interacting with others, through her partly solo road trip Hinoki learns to open herself up to the world around her along with its myriad fragrances and what they say about the people who inhabit a place. She thinks she’s looking for her father, but she’s really looking for herself and the path towards the rest of her life lived in his absence while discovering the richness of life as its lived in addition to that which has passed.

Memories of His Scent screened as part of this year’s Osaka Asian Film Festival.

Unborn Soul (渡, Zhou Zhou, 2024)

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When a woman receives the news that her unborn child has a 70% chance of being born with a disability she finds herself confronted by a series of uncomfortable social attitudes and prejudices while trying to decide what is best both for herself and her child in Zhou Zhou’s empathetic drama, Unborn Soul (渡, dù). Touching on issues such as the demands of caring for someone with a profound disability and patriarchal notions of needing to continue the family line, the film sees its heroine more or less isolated in her refusal to be pressured into an abortion she isn’t convinced is the right decision. 

Though now relaxed, the legacy of the One Child Policy may in part be influencing the way people think about raising children and the ageing society with Qing’s father-in-law insisting on a “perfect child” to inherit their family name. Qing has been the sole carer for her 60-year-old uncle who has cerebral palsy and an intellectual disability since her grandmother died and it seems to be in the back of her mind to wonder who might be around to care for her child when she is no longer able to if they were indeed to be born with a disability that prevented them from living an independent life. Because of her closeness with her uncle, she has also has a more empathetic view of living with a disability than those around her and believes it is wrong to think that the baby is better off not being born having heard from him that he is glad to be alive.

Her husband however leans towards an abortion admitting that he is not really prepared to care for a disabled child for the rest of his life while his father outright objects to the idea of having someone with a disability in their family. Laying bare the patriarchal attitudes that surround her, Qing is essentially silenced by her husband and father-in-law who at one point says he’s sick of women like her who “can’t communicate” and won’t do what they’re told. Her husband is also in a sense trapped by this patriarchal system in that his father heavily pressures him to force his wife to have an abortion until she finally files for divorce. He has a clause put into the agreement that if Qing insists on going ahead with the pregnancy the child will have no connection to his family regardless of whether or not it is born with a disability. 

While all of this is going on, the baby seems to narrate its thoughts on the present drama while lamenting the suffering he feels himself to be causing to his mother. The question arises of whether or not the baby would wish to be born which is not a question anyone could answer and in any case perhaps he would end up feeling it would have been better to not to have been even if he were born able-bodied and with no intellectual disabilities. In an attempt to reassure herself, Qing visits a home for disabled adults and encounters a man with cerebral palsy who has got a job as a masseur and is living a fulfilling and independent life but is also confronted by the fact that many of these people have been abandoned by families who feared the stigma of disability. 

The implications of the film’s ending maybe slightly uncomfortable even if they reflect Qing’s nature as a true mother who thought only of her child even while the film is otherwise critical of an overly efficient medical system which tries to usher Qing towards an abortion without really considering that her choice to give birth to the child might be valid which also displays a lack of respect for the lives of disabled people. Shot in a classic 4:3 the film flits between theatricality and detachment while shifting into a strangely dreamlike aesthetic with its commentary from the unborn baby who certainly seems quite a sophisticated thinker for one so young. In any case, the decision is in a sense taken out of Qing’s hands leaving her with little choice other than to accept the hand that fate has dealt her while otherwise isolated from a cold and rational society.

Unborn Soul screened as part of this year’s Osaka Asian Film Festival.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Inch Forward (走れない人の走り方, Su Yu-Chun, 2023)

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Why does everything always go wrong just when it was about to go right? Everything has fallen into place for director Kiriko’s upcoming indie film but suddenly she finds herself experiencing a series of crises that are perhaps a bit of a wakeup call teaching her a few things about herself as well as the process of filmmaking. The latest film to tackle the perils of the independent movie scene, Inch Forward (走れない人の走り方, Hashirenai hito no Hashiri-kata) never shies away from the difficulties involved but does suggest they can be overcome with humility and a willingness to get creative.

Part of the problem is Kiriko’s difficulty in making decisions and lack of clarity over her role as a director. Her producer, Takimoto, tries to keep her grounded by pointing out places where the script will be difficult to film and dealing with the actors, but also tells her that she should have a better idea of the message she intends her film to carry and be prepared to answer questions about the script from her cast members. But Kiriko says she doesn’t really intend the film to have a message and thinks creating a character is an actor’s job not a director’s. Whenever Takimoto asks her to reconsider something, Kiriko childishly answers that she’ll think about it probably without really intending to.

But her irresponsible behaviour causes problems for others, particularly when she messes up the company car during a bit of unauthorised location hunting, or fails to shut the front door properly allowing her pregnant roommate’s pet cat to escape and thereby sending her into an early labour. It’s only after these series of crises that Kiriko begins to understand that she needs to make amends and be more considerate in future if she wants to continue receiving help and support from those around her. After all, you can’t make a film all on your own.

Ironically enough she describes her film as like a road movie but on foot about people going to the same place over and over again. Even one of her crew members asks her why it is indie filmmakers like to end at the sea hinting at her screenplay being slightly cliché even as she tries to think her way out of the problem. At a particularly low point, she has a vision of the film being taken away from her as her (all male) crew members and Takimoto remark on how useless she is and vow to take over their section from her. She also has an obsession with her horoscope which is usually a little negative further deepening her lack of confidence and general sense of despair. 

“Don’t worry, just believe in yourself and move forward’” one of her horoscope ads advises and it might indeed by good advice for an indie filmmaker. Learning to be a little more considerate of those around her, she begins to benefit from their help and advice rather than rejecting it in her own insecurity. Despite all of the constraints her friend tells her that she should make something authentic, what she actually wants to do rather than cynically doing what seems the most advantageous, but what’s really important is a sense of balance. As Takimoto told her, she needs to learn to prioritise rather than expect to get everything she wants and be realistic about what’s achievable while still aiming for the film she wants to make. 

Then again in the cinema scenes which bookend the film Su implies that the audience weren’t particularly impressed or perhaps confused by her road movie that doesn’t go anywhere. One audience member was so deeply asleep they had to be woken by an usher. Nevertheless, to overcome her problems Kiriko has to take the lead in more ways than one asserting control over her project but also prepared to work with others, listen to their suggestions, and make firm decisions as they inch forward towards their goal. Warm and quirky, Su’s lighthearted dramedy never shies away from the difficulties of indie filmmaking but finally resolves that it is possible to overcome them with a little mutual respect and solidarity between those on the other side of the screen.

Inch Forward screened as part of this year’s Osaka Asian Film Festival.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Faraway Family (彼方の家族, Taro Kawasaki & Eisuke Sakauchi, 2023)

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It may be a truism to say that you never really know what’s going on in other people’s lives, but even if a family looks superficially happy and gives the impression everything is going just perfectly for them that might not actually be the case. The title of Taro Kawasaki & Eisuke Sakauchi’s Faraway Family (彼方の家族, Kanata no Kazoku) has a double meaning in that in the Japanese title can be also read as “Kanata’s Family” which is the name of the hero and also a word meaning “somewhere in the distance” which is in fact how both of the boys feel their fathers to exist. 

Kanata may feel it more closely in that he lost his father in the 2011 tsunami and has never really dealt with the grief having moved to Yamagata with his mother. Kanata’s father also had quite a difficult relationship with his fisherman grandfather who was intent on railroading him to take over the boat and seemingly never had a good word for anyone yet his father lost his life after heading to the harbour to look for him explaining only that he was family. Now the only breadwinner in the family, his mother has to work to support them and is therefore often absent, leaving him money to buy dinner from a convenience store which he usually eats alone. 

Having become withdrawn and fearful of making new relationships that may end suddenly, Kanata also has the added stigma of being someone from Fukushima in the wake of the nuclear disaster. His new teacher, Yoshikazu, makes a well-meaning faux pas in telling Kanata to consider him a father figure yet as it turns out Yoshikazu is a fairly compromised one. On being introduced to his classmate Riku who is also Yoshikazu’s son he thinks he’s had his face rubbed in it with this picture of the perfect family.

But what he discovers is that Riku has many of the same problems as himself seeing as he also fears he does not really fit in his family and wonders if they’d be happier and better off if he weren’t in it. Unlike Riku, Kanata doesn’t seem to be overly burdened by parental expectation and despite the problems between his father and grandfather his early childhood seems to have been happy and filled with love and cheerfulness. His problem is more to do with what he’s lost and the resulting sense of absence it’s left behind as he finds himself eternally missing his father. 

For Riku meanwhile, it’s the connection itself which is painfully absent. The more he tries to connect with Yoshikazu the more it seems to backfire while Yoshikazu seems obsessed with the idea of his getting into Japan’s most prestigious university mostly for his own gratification as double proof of what a great teacher and father he is. Or else, to mask his own sense of inadequacy in that he would feel embarrassed professionally if his own son turned out not to be academically inclined. Riku’s family don’t celebrate birthdays and he can’t ever remember getting a present but when he decides to try and buy one for Yoshikazu it’s a reminder of a happier memory when he simply played with him as a loving father rather than a hard taskmaster driving him on to a vicarious goal as evidence of his controlling nature. 

Kanata seems to have had more than his share of tragedy in life and is painfully aware of the things just our of reach but also increasingly that not all of them are and if you’re not careful you can in fact be the one to push them away. Shooting in the icy snow of a Yamagata winter, Kawasaki and Sakauchi capture the frostiness of the boys’ emotional isolation but also the quickening warmth of their friendship as they bond over their shared loneliness in pining for an absent father. What Kanata learns is to embrace the things that seem somewhere far away for they do at least exist there, even if no longer present in a physical sense, and that the memory of them can be warm and comforting rather than painful or lonely. 

Faraway Family screened as part of this year’s Osaka Asian Film Festival.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

The Missing (Iti Mapukpukaw, Carl Joseph E. Papa, 2023)

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The title of Carl Joseph E. Papa’s meta animation The Missing (Iti Mapukpukaw) most obviously refers to the hero’s uncle with whom his mother has lost contact, but in a deeper sense refers to the protagonist himself and the various things he too is missing which notably includes his mouth. Shot in a rotoscope style, Eric’s (Carlo Aquino) mouth is literally blurred out as if it had been erased and smoothed over. He can no longer speak but uses a dry erase board to communicate with those around him.

His troubles start just he’s about to go on a sort of date with coworker Carlo (Gio Gahol) which ends with them discovering the body of his uncle who has apparently passed away in a lonely death. It’s it at this point that Eric is plagued by an alien who keeps trying to abduct him claiming that they have unfinished business. Eric later asserts that he’s afraid the alien is trying to take over his body, hinting at a deeper childhood trauma and anxiety over bodily autonomy and intimacy. The alien’s attacks seem intensify as he grows closer to Carlo, frustrating their tentative romance as if it actively trying to obstruct it. 

The alien’s presence leads to what may seem to others like strange or inconsiderate behaviour. He disappears on Carlo, locks him out of his flat, and seemingly drops out of contact for days on end causing him not an inconsiderate degree of worry given he’s just lost his uncle and appears to be in a state of emotional distress. Yet the most surprising thing is even on being told about the alien Carlo decides to just go with it, taking Eric’s explanation at face value and trying to help him evade it for as long as possible. He eventually admits that he can’t see what Eric sees and they aren’t where he thinks they are but otherwise provides a safe and non-judgmental presence that quietly supports him while he battles his internal demons. His mother Linda (Dolly De Leon) does something similar apparently aware of the alien’s existence, but not what lies behind it or what it really might mean.

Just as reality and fantasy begin to blur for Eric, Papa uses the medium to express his mental state as the world seems to literally crumble around him. The alien steals parts of his body and they literally disappear, a missing ear and blurred out eye along with a blankness where his hand should be. When Eric begins to recall his childhood memories, the animation style switches from the sophisticated rotoscoping of the rest of the film to something much simpler echoing a child’s drawings. In these sequences, the face of Eric’s uncle is always scribbled over in black pen echoing his more literal refusal to see and accept the past. He has been literally silenced by his trauma but now finds it banging on the doors of his mind demanding to be let in.

Yet the reason he is able to overcome it is precisely because of the love an acceptance he receives from his mother and Carlo who never question his reality or attempt to break him out of it, instead deciding to join him there and help him in his quest to get rid of the alien that has plagued him since his childhood. Only this way can he begin to reclaim the parts of himself that were missing, digging through the buried past to retrieve what was taken from him and eventually recovering his voice. 

His quest has a gently absurd quality as parts of him suddenly detach themselves and run away, leaving it unclear for much of the film if Eric’s alien is “real” in a more concrete sense or merely a representation of his childhood trauma and very much inspired by logics and aesthetics of a small child who has been forced to keep a secret out of fear and shame and thereby unable to communicate his pain. In the end it’s love that brings him out of it, a gentle, patient and unconditional love that takes him as he is and gives him the space to find his own way out his trauma. Filled with a sense of warmth despite the darkness of its centre Carl Joseph E. Papa’s strangely poignant film for all its talk of aliens and destruction is remarkably human allowing its protagonist to finally begins to recover himself thanks to the loving support of those around him.

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

Original trailer (English subtitles)