FEATURE FILMS [JAP] - LINE UP
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Red Post on Escher Street (2020)
Sion Sono
The auditions for genius director Tadashi Kobayashi’s latest film have attracted actors both well known and unknown.
Some have applied just out of curiosity or as a way of achieving their late-husband’s acting dreams. Others are members of the “Love Kobayashi to Death Club” or a traditionally dressed theater troupe. There is even a fake famous actress and a disturbed woman out for blood.
Together, these characters form a diverse human tapestry in the audition space.
Meanwhile, Kobayashi is struggling to finish writing the screenplay and to cope with the executive producer’s unreasonable demands. Amid his struggles, his old girlfriend reappears....
SHELL AND JOINT (2019)
Isamu Hirabayashi
Nitobe (Keisuke Horibe) and Sakamoto (Mariko Tsutsui) are childhood friends who work at the front desk of a capsule hotel in Tokyo. Nitobe likes arthropods and philosophy, while Sakamoto only commits suicide. A variety of guests come to the capsule hotel. A Finnish mother who lost her child.A woman fugitive. A student studying water fleas . . . 。 But their lives never cross. They are like capsule hotels lined up tidy fashion, amid indifferently flowing time. The scraps of various people's lives play out against a motif of arthropods, on themes of life, death, and sex.
DREAMS ON FIRE (2021)
Philippe McKie
Fleeing to Tokyo with the hopes that she can fulfill her dream of becoming a dancer, Yume is met with the harsh reality that success isn't something that comes quickly or easily. Whilst juggling her job as a hostess in Tokyo's red-light district, Yume throws herself headfirst into studying the art form and integrating herself into the underground dance community. Starring one of Japan's most famous dancers, Bambi Naka, in her first lead role, Dreams on Fire is a vibrant and intoxicating look into Japanese dance and subculture communities.
ZERO AS YOU ARE (2019)
Miyuki Tokoi
Documentary about the first failure case of sex reassignment surgery in Japan.
In Japan, transgender people have to go through removing reproductive organs in order to change the registered sex. Quite a few people can make mistakes in undertaking the surgery which can harm health, body and mind.
I filmed the protagonist for 9 years, age 15 to 24, who went through all the process only to find that he chose the wrong gender. But is it really a failure? The judgment is all up to each viewer.
"I am a boy, though born with the body of a girl. That is my unique quality. " The story is a 3000 day journey, to find the true self while drifting between a boy and a girl.
WAVE OF FORGIVENES (2020)
Shingo Soejima
Namiko works at a nursing home as a caregiver.
One day her mother Hanae, who abandoned her in her childhood, comes to the facility as a care receiver.
Hanae suffers from dementia and forgets everything about her daughter. While Namiko takes care of her mother, she cannot overcome her bitter memories of how her mother abused
and abandoned her.