Eureka
Press Play to start
Theatrical Screenings
Kinomuzeum
Kinoteka 3
Online Availability
Additional Materials
Film description
In a town in northern Kyushu, a man hijacks a bus and kills its passengers. The only survivors are the driver and two young siblings, a girl and her older brother. In the aftermath, the survivors form a unique bond, united by the question of why they, of all people, were spared. Unable to return to their former lives, they set off together into the depths of the island, seeking to regain a sense of agency, shed their guilt and come to terms with their grief.
Eureka is a poignant meditation on memory, responsibility and the harrowing path back to normality – a cinematic epic, built out of silence, about how to go on living when the past refuses to be forgotten. Shinji Aoyama creates something more than a film about trauma: he offers an account of a process of spiritual healing. At the time of its release, Eureka was conceived almost as a kind of prayer; nearly three decades later, it still resonates as a meditative psalm about learning to live with trauma. Few filmmakers have been able to give this subject such a transcendental dimension. Once viewed as a spiritual compass for entering the new millennium, today Eureka stands above all as a mesmerising road movie about searching for the colours of life that faded with a sudden tragedy.
text:
Łukasz Mańkowski
Shinji Aoyama
Shinji Aoyama (1964–2022) was a Japanese film director, screenwriter, composer, film critic and writer. He studied at Rikkyo University in Tokyo, where he was greatly influenced by lectures on film criticism given by Shigehiko Hasumi, one of Japan’s most prominent film critics of the 1980s. After graduating, he worked as an assistant director on numerous film and television productions. He made his directorial debut with Helpless in 1996. His 2000 film Eureka (screened at the 20th Five Flavours Asian Film Festival), which won the FIPRESCI Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, brought him international recognition. He is regarded as one of the key figures in the revival of Japanese cinema at the turn of the millennium.
1996 Helpless
1996 Chinpira: Two Punks
1997 Wild Life
1997 Tsumetai Chi / An Obsession
1999 Shady Grove
1999 Embalming
2000 Eureka
2001 Tsuki no Sabaku / Desert Moon
2002 Mike Yokohama: A Forest with No Name
2004 Lakeside Murder Case
2005 Boże mój, Boże mój, czemuś Mnie opuścił? / Eri Eri rema sabakutani / My God, My God, Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me?
2006 Kōrogi / Crickets
2007 Sad Vacation
2011 Tōkyō Kōen / Tokyo Park
2013 Tomogui / The Backwater
2020 Sora ni Sumu / Living in Your Sky
