With brutal elegance, Uchida develops the idea that physical reality cannot be equated with subjective truth.
Category: Family
Night Flower (2025) review [Nippon Connection 2026]
Eiji Uchida delivers a highly moving drama of motherhood.
SAI: Disaster (2025) review [Nippon Connection 2026]
Yutaro Seki and Kentaro Hirase deliver an experience that, in our view, has everything to become a cult-phenomenon, so do not sleep on it.
Tokyo Taxi (2025) review [Nippon Connection 2026]
Yoji Yamada delivers an incredibly touching experience – possibly his swangsong – for cinephiles to savour.
Moon In The Ordinary (2025) review [Nippon Connection 2026]
Spectators who haven’t had similar life-experiences might struggle to emotionally invest into the characters and the narrative.
At the Lovehotel (2026) review [Nippon Connection 2026]
Santa Ikegami delivers a self-assured debut that does not easily give away its thematical message.
All About Lily Chou-Chou (2001) review-analysis
A modern classic, one of the best, if not the best, cinematic experiences of the ‘00.
Fujiko (2026) review [Nippon Connection 2026]
An incredibly satisfying feel-good experience about personal freedom, about holding on to one’s desire within a societal field that seeks to suffocate it.
The Snow Woman (1968)
Tokuzo Tanaka’s film remains, up until this day, an incredibly satisfying tragic romance-horror.
Sana (2023) review
Takashi Shimizu cannot avoid his film from being held back from the fan-service it needs to deliver.
After the Quake (2025) review
Inoue delivers an engaging cerebral experience that traces out the effect of the great Hanshin Earthquake on subjectivity as well as the state of the father within a capitalistic and consumerist society.
Unreachable (2025) review
The melodrama does not merely fall flat, but also leaves a sour aftertaste in the spectator’s mouth.
A Strange House (2024) review
Uketsu, your work deserves better.
Confetti (2023) review
A pleasant film that underlines, in an elegant and touching manner, the necessity for the subject to find an Other to commit himself to his dream, to his desire.
This Is I (2026) review
Matsumoto makes a very convincing case for the need for the societal field to become more willing to grant subjects the right to nominate themselves in accordance with their subjective position.