After the extraordinary international success of the Oscar-winning Drive My Car, writer-director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi turned away from the noise and quietly made this small-scale independent film, a work of simplicity and grace about a rural community and the developers who want to built a “glamping” retreat in the woods. The protagonist, Takumi, is a taciturn woodsman whose natural authority the developers seek to co-opt… but things don’t quite work out that way.
Hamaguchi invests this all-too familiar ecological scenario not with drama, but with a rapt attention to Takumi’s way of life: how he chops wood, forages for mushrooms, or takes the measure of an icy stream. That’s not to suggest that nothing happens — there is conflict; change; tragedy — but rather than declare its intentions the film seeks to embody the patient virtues of living in harmony with nature, invites us to absorb them, and reflect.
Meditative and moving.
Jessica Kiang, Variety
Ryûsuke Hamaguchi
Hitoshi Omika, Ryo Nishikawa, Ryuji Kosaka, Ayaka Shibutani, Hazuki Kikuchi
Japan
2023
In Japanese with English subtitles
Grand Jury Prize, Venice 2023
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Credits
Producer
Satoshi Takata
Screenwriter
Ryusuke Hamaguchi
Cinematography
Yoshio Kitagawa
Editor
Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Azusa Yamazaki
Production Design
Masato Nunobe
Original Music
Eiko Ishibashi
Also Playing
The Remarkable Life of Ibelin
Mats Steen, a Norwegian gamer, died of a degenerative muscular disease at the age of 25. His parents mourned what they thought had been a lonely and isolated life, when they started receiving messages from online friends around the world.
Ru + Kim Thúy in Conversation
At ten, Tinh and her family are forced to flee Vietnam and eventually find refuge in wintery but welcoming Quebec. A lyrical, warm adaptation of the award-winning novel by Kim Thúy, who will join us in conversation after the screening.
Janet Planet
For her first film as writer-director, Pulitzer prize-winning playwright Annie Baker gives us a lonely and imaginative 11-year-old, Lacey (Zoe Zigler) besotted with her single mom, Janet (Julianne Nicholson).