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.
Tag: Yuzu Aoki
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.
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.
Love Will Tear Us Apart (2023) review [Camera Japan Festival]
A narrative that blows a refreshing wind in both the slasher and the romance genre.
The Nighthawk’s first Love (2022) review [Female Gaze – Japan Society]
An understated and moving exploration of the impact the demand for the other’s love has on the subject’s ‘relational’ signifiers and acts and of the importance of one’s first love for one’s coming-into-being as subject.
A Girl On The Shore (2021) review
“Ueda’s engaging film is all about two subjects trying to escape their phantasmatic identification with the notion of trash.”
Spaghetti Code Love (2021) review [Japan Cuts 2021]
“Maruyama’s narrative speaks powerfully to the spectator’s subjectivity – his fears and hopes – and enables his evocation of a glimmer of hope that remains present in this dark depressive modern relational mess to positively impact his audience.”
Sacrifice (2019) review [Japan Cuts 2020]
“A compelling exploration of the enticing power religious cults and militaristic organization have in a society driven by consumption and enjoyment and – as vague as it may sound – the Otherness of the others.”
Ice-cream and the sound of raindrops (2018) review
“Daigo Matsui’s best work yet. And it might even be the best movie of 2018.”
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