Category: Youth

Blank Canvas: My So-Called Artist’s Journey (2025) review [Fantasia film Festival]

Seki offers audiences a touching fictionalized account of Akiko Higashimura’s relationship with her mentor Kenzo Hidaka.

Yoyogi Johnny (2025) review [OAFF 2025]

Kimura’s choice to give the tragical dimension of love a deadpan comical twist pays off, creating a unique narrative that will resonate with youth and those who have kept in touch with their younger self

V. Maria (2025) review [OAFF 2025]

The neatly interwoven narrative fabric, which evokes the dimension of loss in various forms, beautifully sketches out the importance for the subject to construct a narrative to support and jump-start one’s coming-into-being.

Mukoku (2017) review

Kumakiri offers a fresh breath in the Japanese sports genre by focusing on trauma, the ill-fitting of the subject within the societal Other, and the importance of forming bonds with the other.

The Taste of Tea (2004) review

Katsuhito Ishii’s offers the spectator a satisfying kaleidoscopic exploration of the emotional fabric of life and the importance of familial bonds.

Sin And Evil (2024) review [Japannual 2024]

Saito shows that the Other always bears some responsibility for the subjective outcomes of dysfunctional familial dynamics and the criminal excesses that plague its mendacious image of peaceful harmony.