Strangers in the City

2010. 123 min., 35 mm, in Japanese with English subtitles.
Directed by Junji Sakamoto. With Toru Nakamura, Manami Konishi, Nao Minamisawa, Shun Sugata, Yosuke Kubozuka.

“…as complex as The Big Sleep and Chinatown rolled into one…” – Russell Edwards, Variety

Action film journeyman Junji Sakamoto’s noir/mystery thriller is a story of disgrace and redemption: Hatano (Toru Nakamura), a former high-school teacher, has been fired from his school because of his scandalous relationship with Masako (Manami Konishi), one of his students. He marries her but they soon divorced, and now he is teaching in a cram school in his hometown. When a female student from his cram school disappears, he traces her steps back to Tokyo. There, he finds out that the school that fired him is somehow involved with the girl’s disappearance, and he is reunited with the ex-child bride-now-Tokyo hostess girl Masako after 12 years.

Soon the cram-school teacher faces ruthless gangsters and his own inner demons while trying to rescue the runaway student from Tokyo’s decadence.

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

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