“Desert of Namibia,” about a caustic 21-year-old Japanese wanderer, embodies its protagonist’s listlessness to a fault. Director Yôko Yamanaka was still a teenager when she made her debut feature “Amiko” in 2017, a sharply funny high school film with the jagged, quick-cut energy of a YouTube travel vlog. It marked her as a Gen Z voice to watch. “Desert of Namibia” similarly follows a young woman trying to find herself, but it swings stylistically in the opposite direction, holding and zooming for hilariously, sometimes painfully long. Your mileage may vary, as the film has a tendency to meander off course, but that is exactly its intention.
Actress Yuumi Kawai is immediately magnetic as Kana, a young Tokyo woman hinted to have roots in a different city or country, but the film is often opaque about important details. While shot with straightforward clarity, its narrative, like its protagonist’s mood, feels enveloped by fog.
Actress Yuumi Kawai is immediately magnetic as Kana, a young Tokyo woman hinted to have roots in a different city or country, but the film is often opaque about important details. While shot with straightforward clarity, its narrative, like its protagonist’s mood, feels enveloped by fog.
- 5/27/2024
- by Siddhant Adlakha
- Variety Film + TV
Japan’s Happinet Phantom Studios is to handle world sales of Yoko Yamanaka’s Desert Of Namibia, which is set to world premiere in Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes.
The drama marks the second feature of rising Japanese writer-director Yamanaka, who became the youngest director to premiere in Berlin aged 20 with her debut Amiko in 2018.
Her latest stars Yumi Kawai, whose credits include award-winning Plan 75, which played in Un Certain Regard in 2022, and Venice Horizons 2022 title A Man. A new look at Kawai in the film can be seen above.
She plays Kana, a bipolar 21-year-old who is directionless and...
The drama marks the second feature of rising Japanese writer-director Yamanaka, who became the youngest director to premiere in Berlin aged 20 with her debut Amiko in 2018.
Her latest stars Yumi Kawai, whose credits include award-winning Plan 75, which played in Un Certain Regard in 2022, and Venice Horizons 2022 title A Man. A new look at Kawai in the film can be seen above.
She plays Kana, a bipolar 21-year-old who is directionless and...
- 5/2/2024
- ScreenDaily
Susumu Hani's always experimented in his films, frequently muddying the borders between his fiction and his documentary works, with his movies including terms such as film-about-film, mockumentary, meta, and found footage long before they became widely known. “The Morning Schedule” highlights his style quite eloquently, with the freedom he enjoined from Atg resulting in a film where he has truly left himself loose.
Follow our coverage of Atg by clicking on the link below
After Kusako commits suicide, two of her closest friends, Tsuji and Reiko, one man and one woman, try to understand the reasons behind her actions, by visiting her Super-8 films and clips from the summer trips they took together.
Describing “The Morning Schedule” is quite a difficult endeavor, considering how unusual and complicated the narrative is. The film-about-film concept is probably the most prevalent, with the two watching a number of Kusako's movies, and reminiscing about their youth together,...
Follow our coverage of Atg by clicking on the link below
After Kusako commits suicide, two of her closest friends, Tsuji and Reiko, one man and one woman, try to understand the reasons behind her actions, by visiting her Super-8 films and clips from the summer trips they took together.
Describing “The Morning Schedule” is quite a difficult endeavor, considering how unusual and complicated the narrative is. The film-about-film concept is probably the most prevalent, with the two watching a number of Kusako's movies, and reminiscing about their youth together,...
- 9/8/2023
- by Panos Kotzathanasis
- AsianMoviePulse
One of only three surviving films to be directed by Sadao Yamanaka, “Tange Sazen and the Pot Worth a Million Ryo” is a Japanese comedy that has endured through the ages. A spin-off of the popular Tange Sazen series that features one of the 1930’s most famous chanbara actors, Denjiro Okochi, the film presents a merry misadventure filled with colorful characters.
Tange Sazen and the Pot Worth a Million Ryo is screening as part of Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme 2023
Genzaburo Yagyu (Kunitaro Sawamura) inherits nothing from his father but an old pot that is supposedly a family heirloom. However, he soon discovers that the seemingly worthless pot contains a map leading to worth one million Ryo, but not before his wife pawns it off to some junk dealers. The pot eventually lands in the hands of a young boy named Yasu, who uses it to house his precious goldfish.
Tange Sazen and the Pot Worth a Million Ryo is screening as part of Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme 2023
Genzaburo Yagyu (Kunitaro Sawamura) inherits nothing from his father but an old pot that is supposedly a family heirloom. However, he soon discovers that the seemingly worthless pot contains a map leading to worth one million Ryo, but not before his wife pawns it off to some junk dealers. The pot eventually lands in the hands of a young boy named Yasu, who uses it to house his precious goldfish.
- 2/16/2023
- by Tom Wilmot
- AsianMoviePulse
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