Going The Distance

Film description

Asahi, who comes from the Goto Islands, earns a living as a boxing coach at a little club in Tokyo. He also helps his childhood friend to get some money but the latter soon gets into trouble. Asahi wants to give him a hand but this would mean postponing his long-expected marriage with Kaori.

A simple storyline becomes a starting point to contemplate on the concept of family: the one linked by blood ties, the one imposed by fate and the one chosen voluntarily on the path of life. The director presents personages caught in the net of loyalty and making wrong choices (perhaps the right ones simply do not exist). The dense, emotionally loaded screenplay focuses on a small group of characters and it is through their struggles that the director portraits the generation stepping into adulthood  long after the Japanese economic boom, experiencing the results of deep divisions in the society. It is not easy to become successful when you start from nothing, just as it is difficult to loosen the rigid definitions of family, of natives and strangers, of those respected and those unworthy of respect.

Jagoda Murczyńska