One of most upsetting confrontations with the way the societal and familial Other can fail the subject.
Category: Family
Renoir (2025) review
Chie Hayakawa delivers an incredible moving experience that succeeds in exploring the difficulty for the subject to deal with death and the loss it introduces.
HappyEnd (2024) review
An incredible tour-de-force that hits home.
My Sunshine (2024) review
A bittersweet celebration of youth – seishun, celebrates the importance of the encounter and of desire, the force that pushes the subject towards inter-subjective connection.
Teki Cometh (2024) review [Camera Japan Festival]
A vivid and mesmerising experience that does not only illustrates the subjective impact of increased isolation on giving meaning to one’s own life – on the stability of the frame of one’s ego.
Evil Does not Exist (2023) review
Ryusuke Hamaguchi offers a highly meditative exploration of the position of violence within the natural Real and the human symbolic, the realm of speech.
The Young Strangers (2024) review [Camera Japan Festival 2025]
Uchiyama delivers a masterpiece that does not merely grab the spectator by his throat, but confronts him with the fundamental importance of the signifier in a heartrending way.
The Harbor lights (2025) review [Japannual 2025]
The beauty of Harbor Lights lies in its ability to invite the spectator to think through the dynamic of inter-generational trauma – the dimension of loss – and the destabilizing effect of (structural) discrimination long after the credits have faded.
The Invisible Half (2025) review [Japannual 2025]
Masaki Nishiyama’s message resounds clearly: embrace your Otherness, despite all the societal hammers seeking to hammer you, the nail that sticks out, down.
Strangers in Kyoto (2025) review [Japannual 2025]
A light-hearted exploration of uncomfortable truths that marks our interactions with others/the Other – what we say is not what we mean; what we want to say we are not allowed to say; politeness is often a fabricated facade that we must believe in.
A Bad Summer (2025) review [Japannual 2025]
Hideo Jojo offers a compelling exploration of poverty within the Japanese societal field as well as the the structural possibility of exploiting the welfare system for one’s own gain.
New Group (2025) review [Japannual 2025]
Yuta Shimotsu delivers a narrative that, in all probability. will be called the first true J-horror classic of the current decade.
How Dare You? (2025) review [Camera Japan Festival]
With her narrative, Mipo O delivers one of the most convincing arguments to parents to create space for the subjectivity of their child and to take their signifiers – their pleasures, pressures, worries, fights, and frustrations – seriously.
The Man Who Failed To Die (2025) review [Camera Japan Festival]
Seiji Tanaka refuses to colour within the lines of comedy, creating an eclectic collage of different genre-elements that does not fail to satisfy the spectator.
Dear Stranger (2025) review
Tetsuya Mariko’s drama of the passion for ignorance could very well be the best Japanese film of the year.
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