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.
Tag: Reiko Kataoka
Thorns of Beauty (2023) [Nippon Connection 2023]
Hideo’s latest uncovers the deep marks that the thorns of phallic beauty have left on contemporary society.
Goodbye Cruel World (2022) review [Japannual 2022]
“A stylish exploration of the cruel call for destruction that structures the perverse criminal field.”
Intolerance (2021) [22nd Nippon Connection]
Yoshida’s narrative hits all the right emotional notes for the audience and that its message will long linger in the spectator’s mind.
Ring Wandering (2022) review
With his narrative, Kaneko gracefully invites the spectator to question whether he has not forgotten the subjective importance of forging inter-subjective bonds.
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.
Life: untitled (2020) review
A confronting narrative that underlines the necessity for male subjects to lay down their eroticizing gaze and meet a woman as a subject, as someone who is driven by unconscious desires and own demands as well as marked by her own failure of understanding herself.
Yamato (California) 2016 review
“A moving and motivational piece that beautifully reveals (…) the importance of assuming a place to speak and thus a place within society. (…) Without a doubt, (…) the best Japanese movie of 2016.”
psychocinema 