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 Directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi
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Casting Blossoms to the Sky
Directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi • 2012 • Japan
Starring Yasuko Matsuyuki, Masahiro Takashima, Natsuki HaradaIn the aftermath of the Tohoku earthquake, journalist Reiko Endo (Yasuko Matsuyuki) travels to the city of Nagaoka as it prepares for an annual fireworks festival memorializing the fallen v...
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Sada
Directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi • 1998 • Japan
Starring Hitomi Kuroki, Tsurutaro Kataoka, Norihei MikiLegendary director Nobuhiko Obayashi brings his unique vision to the notorious true story of Sada Abe, the Japanese geisha whose life of hardship and sadomasochistic obsession exploded into publi...
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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...
