North American Premiere
Naoko Ogigami, director of VIFF 2017 favorite Close-Knit, returns to the festival with a gentle comedy/drama about second chances and the transformative power of friendship.
Riverside Mukolitta stars Kenichi Matsuyama as Yamada, an ex-con trying to come to terms with the death of his estranged father. In an attempt to make a fresh start, Yamada moves to a small fishing town and finds work processing dried squid. Helping him get back on his feet, Yamada’s manager finds him a place to live in an old apartment building populated by a motley group of misfits. Holding this community together is Shiori (Hikari Mitsushima), the landlady harbouring her own tragic past. How can healing happen in such an odd place?
Based on Ogigami’s own 2019 novel, Riverside Mukolitta approaches the topic of mortality with reassuring simplicity and a dry, quirky sense of humor, taking the audience along with Yamada as he discovers that life’s sorrows and burdens are easier to bear with kindred spirits to help you bear them.
Media Partner
Kenichi Matsuyama, Tsuyoshi Muro, Hikari Mitsushima, Noriko Eguchi, Daisuke Kuroda, Toshiaki Chiku
Japan
2021
In Japanese with English subtitles
Book Tickets
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
The Art of Adventure
The unbelievable adventure story of how painter Robert Bateman and ecologist Bristol Foster drove a Land Rover from Africa to Australia in 1957, developing a love of nature to last a lifetime. An inspirational love letter to the adventure of life itself.
Chasing Ice
This visually stunning film follows renowned National Geographic photographer James Balog on a harsh Arctic expedition where he captures a multi-year record of the world's changing glaciers — undeniable evidence that our planet is in crisis. The screening will be introduced by James Balog.
Dead Lover
A foul-smelling gravedigger's romance ends in tragedy, spurring her to attempt a resurrection through a madcap series of science experiments. Grace Glowicki and Ben Petrie’s film is a zany DIY horror that zaps fresh life into Mary Shelley's classic.
Calle Málaga
Seventy-nine-year-old María Ángeles lives independently in Tangier's Spanish quarter. When her daughter pressures her into selling her apartment, she refuses to give in, finding in her old age a new resilience and an unexpected romantic connection.
Sansho the Bailiff
The third of the great Japanese masters (with Ozu and Kurosawa), Mizoguchi is a poet of suffering. There's plenty of that here in his exquisite telling of an ancient folktale about the enslavement of a woman and her two children.
Credits
Executive Producer
Daiji Horiuchi, Tsuyoshi Goroh, Shinichi Tago, Kazuo Nakanishi, Yumiko Masuda, Nobuo Kameyama, Riki Takeuchi, Junji Igarashi, Takayuki Suzuki, Misaki Kawamura,Osamu Nakanishi, Nobuo Komazawa
Producer
Ryoko Nozoe, Takuro Nagai, Shintaro Hori
Screenwriter
Naoko Ogigami
Cinematography
Hiroki Ando
Editor
Shinichi Fushima
Original Music
PASCALS
Art Director
Mayumi Tomita
Director
Naoko Ogigami
Naoko Ogigami was born in Japan and studied film at the University of Southern California. Her directorial debut, Yoshino’s Barber Shop (2004), received a Special Mention at the Kinderfilmfest at the Berlin International Film Festival. Her fourth film, Glasses (2007), received the Manfred Salzgeber Award, also at the Berlinale. Her 2017 film Close-Knit received awards at different film festivals, including the Teddy Jury Award at the Berlinale. She wrote for the stop-motion animation series Rilakkuma and Kaoru, which premiered on Netflix in 2019.
Filmography: Yoshino’s Barber Shop (2003); Glasses (2007); Rent-a-Cat (2012); Close-Knit (2017)