Skip to main content
Super Happy Forever film image; man sitting on ledge in front of building and palm tree

Super Happy Forever

Panorama

This event has passed

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

Director
Cast

Hiroshi Sano, Yoshinori Miyata, Nairu Yamamoto, Hoang Nhu Quynh

Credits
Country of Origin

Japan/France

Year

2024

Language

In Japanese with English subtitles

18+

At SFU Woodwards

19+

At Fifth Avenue

94 min
Cinemas of Asia Drama Romance
MLD Films, Nobo LLC

Book Tickets

This event has passed.

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 headshot; Super Happy Forever director

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

Another Woman

Dir. Woody Allen
77 min

Gena Rowlands as philosophy teacher whose meticulously controlled life begins to unravel after she starts to eavesdrop on a psychotherapist's sessions.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

Love

Dir. Dag Johan Haugerud
119 min

This warm, thoughtful piece offers shrewd comic observations on modern dating as it trains a quizzical eye on the trysts of a female doctor, Marianne (Andrea Bræin Hovig), and her colleague, a gay male nurse, Tor (Tayo Cittadella Jacobsen).

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

Never Forgotten / On To Ottawa Trek

Dir. J.A. Bello
52 min

This fascinating documentary sheds light on a pivotal moment in labour relations in Canada at the height of the Great Depression, when striking BC labourers made their way to Ottawa to protest conditions in government work camps. There will be a filmmaker Q&A after the screening.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

Beautiful Evening, Beautiful Day

Dir. Ivona Juka
137 min

In this powerful period drama, a Yugoslav filmmaker falls out of favour with the Communist regime in the 1950s. Suspected of homosexuality and ideological impurity, he has enemies in high places, but refuses to concede his human rights.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

Night on Earth

Dir. Jim Jarmusch
128 min

Gena Rowlands takes a cab driven by Winona Ryder in this low-key charmer from Jim Jarmusch, one of five taxi rides around the globe, each ending with a sliver of insight and understanding.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

April

Dir. Dea Kulumbegashvili
134 min

A doggedly mysterious and haunting account of an investigation into the professionalism of a Georgian Ob-Gyn, Nina, accused of negligance, Dea Kulumbegashvili's film has been compared to the work of masters like Haneke, Glazer and Reygadas.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema