Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme 2025:
Dir: ARAKI Shinji, 2023, 99 min, Japan, Japanese with English subtitles, Cert: 18 (CTBA)
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Sun 16 March // 17:00
Tickets: £5
When IWAMORI Jun’s (WAKABA Ryuya) girlfriend is murdered, he takes it upon himself to get revenge. With careful planning and calculated precision, he murders the perpetrator, MIZOGUCHI (ISEYA Yusuke), throws the body in a lake, and goes home satisfied. Until he wakes up the next morning... and finds himself back at the start of the last 24 hours. His girlfriend’s killer is alive again.
Once more, Jun kills MIZOGUCHI, but the next morning is the same. And the next. No matter how many times Jun exacts his murderous revenge, he’s stuck in a loop living the same day forever. And as he grapples with his hunger for justice, his twisted cat-and-mouse chase with MIZOGUCHI grows ever more absurd, and a bizarre relationship forms between the two of them.
Director ARAKI Shinji blends gripping mystery, bloody revenge, dark comedy and sharp psychological drama in this unpredictable, wildly original take on a familiar time loop premise.
The Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme 2025 Am I Right? Justice, Justification and Judgement in Japanese Cinema
The UK’s biggest festival of Japanese cinema, the Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme (JFTFP), is back for its latest and greatest instalment! In a world where injustice runs rampant, cinematic expressions of justice seem inexhaustible: time and time again, heroic protagonists fend off malicious antagonists or enact their revenge, the constant injustices they face mirroring audiences’ own. Japan is no exception to this, and the JFTFP25 promises to showcase how Japanese filmmakers use the language of cinema to explore the concepts of criminal, social, and moral justice, along with the ways people respond to external judgement. Featuring everything from thought-provoking hidden gems to laugh-a-minute entertainment, UK audiences are invited to join us in questioning the very concepts of justice, justification, and judgement against today’s backdrop of ever-changing values and perspectives.