"Hanagatami" by Nobuhiko Ôbayashi

One of the greatest Japanese filmmakers fulfills a 40-year-old cinematic dream with his latest film “Hanagatami”, a diachronic story about the virtue of youth during the chaos of war.

Born in 1938, with a career that runs for sixty years, Nobuhiko Ôbayashi is a filmmaker that is considered a “master” and “enchanter” of cinema in his own country, but remains almost entirely unknown to the West with the one possible exception being “House”, his first feature film, a surrealistic horror story which has by now reached the status of cult.

One of the last still living Japanese filmmakers who has experienced the horrible events of WWII, Nobuhiko Ôbayashi returns at a critical moment of History. Taking place in 1941, when WWII leads Japan into chaos, “Hanagatami” is anything but a typical period film and the exact opposite of a film in which an older filmmaker reminisces the past. On the contrary, it is an entirely modern, avant garde extravaganza of poetic moments, uncontrollable cinematic power and genius writing.

In the spring of 1941, 16-year-old Toshihiko returns to Japan from Amsterdam and registers for school in Karatsu, a small town on the west coast of the country. He stays with his aunt Keiko, who takes care of her sick daughter Mina. Soon, Toshihiko will become friends with the town’s teenagers who already feel heavy on their shoulders the shadow that war casts.