Directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi • 2017 • Japan
Starring Shunsuke Kubozuka, Shinnosuke Mitsushima, Keishi Nagatsuka
After being diagnosed with stage-four lung cancer at the age of eighty, Nobuhiko Obayashi set out to fulfill his filmmaking dream: an adaptation of a 1937 novella by Kazuo Dan that the director had originally hoped to make even before his legendary feature debut HOUSE in 1977. In the spring of 1941, wide-eyed seventeen-year-old Toshihiko Sakakiyama (Shunsuke Kubozuka) arrives in the coastal town of Karatsu in Saga Prefecture and befriends a group of teenage classmates who fall in love, quarrel, and stumble through their remaining days of youth as war looms on the horizon. An extravagantly stylized epic that makes the most of green screens, elaborate lighting and dizzying editing, Obayashi’s passion project and penultimate film is a grand culmination of the great director’s dazzling visual style and a poignant reminder of the tragedy of war.
Up Next in 21st Century Cinema
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Seven Weeks
Directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi • 2014 • Japan
Starring Toru Shinagawa, Takako Tokiwa, Yumi AdachiIn his follow-up to CASTING BLOSSOMS TO THE SKY, Nobuhiko Obayashi continues to explore themes of lost love, memory, war, and art. At 2:46 PM on March 11, 2013, Mitsuo Suzuki (Toru Shinagawa) takes h...
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It’s Raining Frogs Outside
Directed by Maria Estela Paiso • 2021 • Philippines
Starring Alyana CabralAs the apocalypse looms, a young Filipino woman is forced to return to her childhood home in the province of Zambales. There, as frogs rain down from the sky, she confronts traumatic memories that condense into a surreal ...
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No Data Plan
Directed by Miko Revereza • 2019 • United States
Having lived as an undocumented person in the United States for over twenty years, Filipino American filmmaker Miko Revereza sets out on a three day journey by train from Los Angeles to New York—an anxious odyssey through a succession of transit z...
