
International Premiere
Rikiya Imaizumi’s haunting drama offers an uncommon take on a common problem: how can we know what’s truly inside the hearts and minds of others? As the film begins, Kanae (Yoko Maki) is reopening the bathhouse she shut down when her husband Satoru (Eita Nagayama) vanished without a trace. When Hori (Arata Iura) shows up looking for work, an uneasy companionship begins to form; meanwhile, private investigator Yamasaki (Lily Franky) is investigating Satoru’s disappearance. Gradually, it emerges that Kanae is a woman with two burdens: a mystery she can’t solve and a secret she doesn’t dare reveal. Adapting a manga by Tetsudo Toyoda, Rikiya crafts a film that asks for the viewer’s patience and rewards it amply: the leisurely pace, muted emotions, and psychological ambiguity are the perfect set-up for a series of stunning revelations. Contemplative, poetic, and deceptively casual, Undercurrent is provocative in the questions it asks and richly rewarding in the answers it provides.
Media Partner
Yoko Maki, Arata Iura, Noriko Eguchi, Eita Nagayama, Lily Franky
Japan
2023
Panorama
Japanese
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Credits
Executive Producer
Kentaro Koike, Masahiro Handa
Producer
Kentaro KOIKE, Masahiro HANDA, Akihiro HIRAISHI
Screenwriter
Kaori Sawai, Rikiya Imaizumi
Cinematography
Hiroshi Iwanaga
Editor
Masaya Okazaki
Production Design
Yukihisa Satosu
Original Music
Haruomi Hosono
Director

Rikiya Imaizumi
Born in Fukushima Prefecture in 1981, Rikiya Imaizumi made his directorial debut with the music documentary Tama no Eiga in 2010. Since his debut, he has continued to make love stories with a unique sensibility, Where Is Love (2018) was a smash hit in Japan, gaining tremendous support from young audiences. Little Nights, Little Love (2019) was selected in the competition of Shanghai International Film Festival 2019 and By the Window (2022) won Audience Award in Tokyo International Film Festival 2022.
Filmography: Where Is Love (2018); Little Nights, Little Love (2019); By the Window (2022)
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
Samia
Despite growing up in Mogadishu, Somalia, during the civil war, Samia Yusuf Omar persists in her dream of becoming an Olympic athlete and competes in Beijing, 2008 -- with London, 2012 next on her agenda. Based on a true story.
Sudan, Remember Us
A portrait of young artists and activists, Meddeb's doc charts events in Khartoum between 2019 -- in the immediate wake of the revolution that deposed dictator Omar al-Bashir -- and the mood four years later, when the country has been torn apart by civil war.
Margaret
Seventeen-year-old Lisa is rocked with guilt after a woman is killed in a traffic accident. But that’s only one thread in a teeming social tapestry this intense, passionate teen must negotiate as she comes of age in a time of contradiction and confusion.
E.1027 Eileen Gray and the House by the Sea
In this elegant non fiction film, actors play Irish designer Eileen Gray, her lover, the architect Jean Badovici, and modernist superstar Le Corbusier, who would become obsessed with the house on the Cote d'Azur that Eileen designed.
Scarecrow
A bittersweet, touching buddy movie with Gene Hackman as a volatile tramp, Max, and Al Pacino as "Lion", a drifter now set on returning to the wife and kid he abandoned years ago. Hackman's favourite of his own movies.