Category: Youth

She Taught Me Serendipity (2024) review

Akiko Ohku steers away from delivering a clear-cut romantic fantasy to confront the spectator with the messy consequences of utilizing signifiers in the game of love in a very moving way.

Super Happy Forever (2024) review

A compelling drama that traces out the effect of the unsaid on the subject and highlights the subjective need to have some sort of material proof to support a faded fantasy of harmonious union.

Blazing Fists (2025) review

Miike delivers a drama of hope, a narrative that shows, in a satisfying manner, that a subject can materialize himelf within in the ring and by punching and kicking the demeaning discourses concerning criminality within the Japanese Other into shreds.  

Undead lovers (2024) review

Matsui delivers a heartwarming romance narrative that, due to its fresh approach to certain tropes of the genre, rises above the common derivative romance drivel Japan usually produces.

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.

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.

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.