Wandering (2022) review

With his poetic sensitivity, Sang-il Lee delivers a rich tapestry of genuine emotionality and a powerful affirmation of the fact that the affirmation of the subject lies beyond the field of understanding.

The Island Closest To Heaven (1984) review

“This might be the purest idol-film Obayashi made and the clearest example of how Kadokawa wanted to exploit the audio-visual medium.”

Skeleton Flowers (2021) review

A serene narrative that touchingly explores the possibility of reaching each other as subject despite the misrecognition that structures speech.  

A Liar And a Broken Girl (2010) review

“Seta’s first narrative hits some false notes, but these cannot derail Seta’s first-feature film nor radically complicate the spectator’s pleasure.”

The Promised Land (2019) review [Nippon Connection 2021]

A beautifully composed and highly relevant narrative about destructive kinds of social violence, a social violence against the Otherness present in the community and an ostracizing violence to turn the once-trusted other into an unwanted Otherness.

Hotel Iris (2021) review [Osaka Asian Film Festival]

“An artfully composed erotic narrative that plays with the well-known psychoanalytic fact that the relational past of subjects impacts the possibility and appearance of sexual attraction between a man and a woman.”

Closed Ward/Family of Strangers (2019) review

While ‘Family of Strangers’ runs the risk of corroborating prejudices, Hirayama’s narrative also has the potential to make spectators think about the socially embedded nature of mental suffering,