Skip to main content
Amiko film image; two girls leaning their heads out of a doorway into a hallway

Amiko

This event has passed

Teenage rebel Amiko loves Radiohead but hates pretty much everything else about her boring and banal existence — and her provincial high school above all. Then she meets a boy…

Writer-director Yoko Yamanaka created the film at 19 years old after dropping out of film school, and the rest of the crew was similarly youthful, ranging from 18 to 20 years old. They created the film on a budget of $2,500. A fifth of that budget was spent repairing a car Yamanaka crashed on the way to the set. Money well spent, given that Amiko went on to play film festivals all over the world.

Amiko is a condensed ball of manic energy from start to finish.

Clarence Tsui, Hollywood Reporter

Perfectly evokes the subtle cruelties of high school and the way in which teenage hierarchies function… An extremely self-assured and engaging debut.

Another Gaze

Shot with the manic verve of an amateur travel vlog, twenty-year-old Yoko Yamanaka’s surreal debut captures the unspoken, often inarticulable facets of modern youth.

Siddhant Adlakha, Village Voice

Director

Yôko Yamanaka

Cast

Aira Sunohara, Hiroro Oshita

Country of Origin

Japan

Year

2017

Language

In Japanese with English subtitles

19+
66 min

Book Tickets

This event has passed.

Also Playing

Köln 75

Dir. Ido Fluk
116 min

The true story behind the greatest solo concert in jazz history, this is Keith Jarrett's legendary 1975 Köln Concert — as organized by 18-year-old rebel music promoter Vera Brandes. Fun, inventive and feminist, it's the Bend It Like Beckham of jazz films.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

Orwell: 2+2=5

Dir. Raoul Peck
119 min

Oscar-nominated director Raoul Peck reimagines 1984 in this urgent essay on power, language, and control. With narration by Damian Lewis, it’s a chilling portrait of how Orwell’s warnings became our reality.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

Frankenstein

Dir. Guillermo del Toro
149 min

Frankenstein and Guillermo del Toro might have been made for each other. The movie does not disappoint, a ripping yarn of grand adventure, spectacle, hubris, passion and XXL body parts, a tale of the fantastic that rings the imagination. Screening in 35mm.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

Urchin

Dir. Harris Dickinson
99 min

This impressive, award-winning debut as writer-director from actor Harris Dickinson is a probing portrait of a troubled street kid trying to get his life back on track before it's too late.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre