Japan Society announces Anshul Chauhan 's Kontora as the winner of the inaugural Obayashi Prize at JAPAN CUTS: Festival of New Japanese Film, currently running as an online festival through July 30. The film is selected from titles within Next Generation —the festival's brand-new competitive section dedicated to independently produced narrative feature films from emerging filmmakers in Japan—by a diverse jury of film
industry professionals comprised of film director Momoko Ando ( 0.5mm ), programmer Julian Ross of Locarno Film Festival and International Film Festival Rotterdam, and Free Stone Productions CEO and producer ( Ten Years Japan ) Miyuki Takamatsu.
In their collective statement, they note:
“In this year when the film industry faces irreversible change, the Next Generation competition challenged us as a jury to look to the future. The film we chose explores the weight of the past and our responsibility to engage with it not alone, but together. For a film rooted in the past, we were struck by its sensitive portrayal of a teenage girl, and how she became our guide. We believe in this director's ability to look Japan straight in the eyes, all while using his own special binoculars. The ‘next generation' is something that never stops evolving. Curiously, it was the film that features a man running backwards that got us most excited for the future to come.”
Kontora
Dir. Anshul Chauhan, 2019, 143 min.
Having already lost her mother, high schooler Sora (Wan Marui) is hit especially hard by the passing of her grandfather. Frustrated and lonely in the countryside with her distant father (Taichi Yamada), she is fascinated with the old man's WWII diary featuring vivid sketches and stories of the horrors of war, as well as suggestions of treasure buried in the local forest. The appearance of a mysterious mute man perpetually walking backwards (Hidemasa Mase) brings simmering tensions to a boil. Kontora offers a haunting tale of how one era can speak to another as well as the pain of being lost in memories; an exceptionally accomplished second feature shot in just 10 days by Anshul Chauhan, featuring rich black-and-white cinematography by Max Golomidov and an evocative score by Yuma Koda.
