Sketches of Kaitan City

2010. 152 min., 35 mm, in Japanese with English subtitles.
Directed by Kazuyoshi Kumakiri. With Kaho Minami, Kaoru Kobayashi, Masaki Miura, Mitsuki Tanimura, Pistol Takehara, Ryo Kase, Takashi Yamanaka.

Grand Prize Lina Brocka Award at the 12th Cinemanila International Film Festival

“Not a missing note in any of the performances.” – Nicolas Vroman, EL Magazine

Bleak is beautiful in Kazuyoshi Kumakiri’s humanist masterpiece. Set in the fictional shipbuilding town of Kaitan, modelled after Hakodate, the film is based on an unfinished posthumous book by Yasushi Sato, who once drew comparisons with Haruki Murakami. In five parables of working-class struggle and quiet, existential, economic despair, Kumakiri delineates unfeasibly realistic and dramatic sad-scapes that sometimes seem not so much photographed as cast in iron.

Part of Japan Cuts 2011: The New York Festival of Contemporary Japanese Cinema

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