Metrograph

Celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, Shunji’s film looks ever more astonishingly prescient in its understanding of how a still-young internet would fundamentally alter youth culture. Protagonist Yuichi (Hayato Ichihara) is introduced in an ice field, the landscape gradually obscured by accreting chat room messages; alienated from classmates and his old friend Shusuke (Shugo Oshinari), Yuichi retreats into his relationship with the songs of goth-inflected pop act Lily Chou-Chou—created for the film, with vocals by Salyu—whose music can do nothing to stop the bloody, hormone-fueled reckoning ahead. A clangorous collision of tradition and ultramodernity, innovative in its understanding of digital cinematography as a new medium with new rules.

Distributor: Film Movement

Q&A with director Shunji Iwai moderated by filmmaker Christopher Radcliff on Saturday, June 6th