Toward a Common Tenderness

Documentary Focus

North American Premiere

Intro and Q&A with director Kaori Oda

Produced between Japan and Bosnia-Herzegovina, this entrancing essay film contends with the essential questions of documentary cinema: representing an other with their own emotions and inner life, whether a family member or a person from another culture. Kaori Oda (ARAGANE) knits together unused personal footage from her experiences home in Japan and studies with Béla Tarr at his Film Factory in Sarajevo from 2013-2016. Becoming a masterclass in the art and ethics of filmmaking, the film powerfully engages questions of queer identity, cross-cultural communication, representing poverty and labor, and the power of the camera. A poetic wonder, effortlessly lifting up epiphanies coalesced in images of the everyday.

2017, 63 min., DCP, in Japanese and Bosnian with English subtitles. Directed by Kaori Oda.

"Oda’s film has a mysterious beauty, a beauty on uncertain terrain. Perhaps it most resembles the kind described by Robert Bresson in his Notes on Cinematography: ‘The beauty of your film will not be in the images but in the ineffable that they will emit.’"

— DOK Leipzig

Healthy Japanese light meals, snacks and festival-related refreshments available for purchase by  .