North American Premiere
In Kohei Igarashi’s haunting, mysterious film, Sano (Hiroshi Sano) and his friend Miyata (Yoshinori Miyata) return to the seaside town where Sano met his wife Nagi (Nairu Yamamoto) five years ago. Nagi is now deceased, and the trip is part of an attempt to exorcise Sano’s grief. Eventually, the director takes us back in time, showing the couple’s first meeting…
Kohei shoots in long takes, portraying the action in a cool, distanced manner that allows for contemplation even as the story remains engrossing. Sano and Nagi’s strange, felicitous first meeting is key to the film’s themes of chance, personality, and the strange and often cruel ways they intersect. Hiroshi Sano gives a fine performance, exuding dazed grief in the film’s opening section and altering his technique with the leap back to happier times. Super Happy Forever is a deceptively casual film: beneath the placid surface lies something dark and unnameable yet somehow recognizable.
Supported by
Media Partner
Community Partner
Hiroshi Sano, Yoshinori Miyata, Nairu Yamamoto, Hoang Nhu Quynh
Japan/France
2024
In Japanese with English subtitles
At SFU Woodwards
At Fifth Avenue
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Credits & Director
Executive Producer
Kohei Igarashi, Kenshi Otaka, Misaki Kawamura, Satoshi Takata, Go Kitahara, Takashi Omatsu
Producer
Makoto Oki, Yusaku Emoto
Screenwriter
Kohei Igarashi, Koichi Kubodera
Cinematography
Wataru Takahashi
Editor
Keiko Okawa, Kohei Igarashi, Damien Manivel
Production Design
Masato Nunobe
Original Music
Daigo Sakuragi
Kohei Igarashi 五十嵐耕平
Born in 1983 in Shizuoka Prefecture, Kohei Igarashi directed his first feature film Voice of Rain That Comes at Night (2008) while studying at Tokyo’s Zokei University and went on to win the Korean Critics’ Prize at Cinema Digital Seoul 2008. His second feature film Hold Your Breath Like a Lover (2014), his final work at the Graduate School of Cinema and New Media at the Tokyo University of the Arts, competed at the 67th Locarno International Film Festival. Takara, La nuit ou j’ai nagé (2017), co-directed with French filmmaker Damien Manivel, was selected at the 74th Venice International Film Festival. In 2023, he presented the short film Two of Us at the San Sebastian Film Festival, a sort of prequel to Super Happy Forever.
Filmography: Voice of Rain That Comes at Night (2008); Hold Your Breath Like a Lover (2014); Takara, La nuit ou j’ai nagé (2017)
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
Blue Heron
In the late 1990s, eight-year-old Sasha and her Hungarian immigrant family relocate to a new home on Vancouver Island. Their fresh start is interrupted by increasingly dangerous behaviour from Jeremy, the family’s oldest child.
How Deep Is Your Love
Filmmaker Eleanor Mortimer tags along with a team of oceanographers and marine biologists as they survey the Clarion-Clipperton fracture, one of the most remote spots on Earth, home to a dazzling array of unknown creatures.
Omaha
Cole Webley's road movie about a single dad taking off with his two young kids is really just a fragment of a story, yet it unfolds with such authentic lyricism it lands with a heartbreaking emotional wallop.
The Last One for the Road
Two middle-aged drunkards drive across the Veneto region on a freewheeling bender, taking a young college student along for the ride. A celebration of the spirit of drink and the kinds of stories told around a table of old friends and too much wine.
The Mother and the Bear
Johnny Ma’s film stars Kim Ho-jung as a Korean woman who flies to Winnipeg when her immigrant daughter is hospitalized there. This crowd-pleaser plays up cultural differences to hilarious effect and offers a touching take on mother-daughter tension.
