Hot Pepper, Air Conditioner and the Farewell Speech

With his focus firmly on the conditions of labour in contemporary Japan and on the emptiness of everyday communication, the rising star of the international stage Toshiki Okada describes the ever-greater pressure on the global labor market.

In a discourse which combines the trenchant with the poetic, he singles out the fate of the generation which faces the threat of unemployment and the uncertainty of seasonal work as it enters the job market.

The young writer and director from Yokohama employs three everyday stories and a masterfully structured choreography inspired by the improvisations of the American jazz saxophonist, John Coltrane, to showcase the angst, fear and loneliness of a society on the very brink of collapse in the East just as much as in the West.