Ichiyo Komiya

An overly curious journalist sits face to face with a resident of the mysterious district of North Shinjuku. One is trying to understand the codes and unspoken truths of a closed community; the other gradually reveals his world. Daisuke Miyazaki delivers an unorthodox, futuristic sci-fi full of recursive effects and false appearances. Shot in lustrous black and white, featuring a series of still images, this impossible dialogue is like a response from the future to Chris Marker’s La Jetée. Harrowing yet leavened by humour, the story includes street kids, ancestral pariahs and, as you’d expect, yakuzas.