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Desert of Namibia; woman running on a treadmill with a bag of chips in a bright pink room

At 19, with Amiko, Yôko Yamanaka became the youngest director to be invited to screen a feature at the Berlin Film Festival. Her second feature, Desert of Namibia, won the FIPRESCI prize at Cannes, and critics have put it in a bracket with the bruising emotional work of John Cassavetes and Maurice Pialat. It’s a portrait of an arrogant, attractive, diffident, “difficult” 21-year-old woman, Kana (a mesmerizing Yuumi Kawai), who works at a Tokyo beauty clinic and numbly drifts between boyfriends, leaving wreckage in her wake.

Kana is aimless, rootless, and distracted. At an intentionally protracted 137 minutes, the movie is intently focused, claustrophobic (shot in the boxy 4:3 aspect ratio), and demands concentration. Kana would probably last about 10 seconds, if it crossed her feed. That would be her loss, because the film speaks to Gen Z ennui with acerbic wit and clear feeling.

Kawai’s masterful, multilayered performance, which presents Kana more as willful and lost than born bad and raised wrong, both exposes and humanizes her.

Japan Times

Desert of Namibia offers a refreshing perspective on contemporary Japanese culture rarely seen in cinema.

Louis Roberts, Loud and Clear

Director

Yôko Yamanaka

Cast

Yuumi Kawai, Daichi Kaneko, Kanichiro, Yuzumi Shintani

Credits
Country of Origin

Japan

Year

2024

Language

In Japanese with English subtitles

19+
137 min

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Thursday May 29

3:30 pm
Hearing Assistance Subtitles
VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema
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Sunday June 01

7:30 pm
Hearing Assistance Subtitles
VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre
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Credits

Screenwriter

Yoko Yamanaka

Cinematography

Shin Yonekura

Editor

Banri Nagase

Original Music

Takuma Watanabe

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