Japan's Year Zero

Won Jury's Special Award at the Turin International Film Festival of Young Cinema 1993

The film is hard to understand because it is spoken so fast, but if you listen carefully, you will find that the dialogue is packed with so many detailed gags that you will wonder if they are as good as they could be. The action scenes are so powerful and full of no-frills action that you'd think a major Japanese film would go as far as this. The director's spirit of wanting to do all kinds of things and his entertaining nature carry the film through to the end without stalling. The film's lovable momentum also covers up for some of the story's lapses. Incidentally, the pro-golfer Toraki of the title is a character who appears in only one scene and has nothing to do with the story or theme.

From a symbolic prologue in which a child picks up a knife at the edge of the sea when he is finally separated from his mother, to an epilogue in which he throws the knife into the sea again. The film is an omnibus of seven episodes in which the images of communication are distorted and twisted around the knife.

16mm. Won Bluedents International Film Festival Director Award