Awards and festivals

Film description

Tokyo's industrial suburbs, early 1990s. A group of high school students torment a boy, closing him in a metal box, naked. A girlfriend of one of the perpetrators comes to his rescue, but this is only the beginning of their problems. Everyone here has their own troubles – homosexuality, bulimia, forced sex, unrequited love, conflict with parents. When suppressed, inner rebellion has to finally burst out, causing dramatic consequences.

Yukisada treats the teenagers' problems very seriously. Their dim reality reflects the problems Japan faced in the 1990s – the time of a sudden economic slowdown, a crisis of intergenerational relations, and a lurking fear which soon found its outlet in the terrorist attack conducted by the Aum Shinrikyō sect. The film was based on a popular manga, and the director worked with a group of independent young actors, who poured deep emotions into the characters. It is not a nostalgic, smooth journey into this now-popular decade, even though each detail, from clothes to the music, is meticulously recreated. The director invites us into the world of intense experiences, framed by the teenage cynicism and a deafeningly painful solitude.

Jagoda Murczyńska