Night Train
夜の電車
A young couple in Kyoto. A girl makes up an excuse to run away from her monotonous life. She would like to say something to her boyfriend. Can she still return now that night is falling?
“Night Train was the entry film of Japanese filmmaker Aya Kawazoe for the Tokyo University of Arts, where she was admitted and studied cinema under the supervision of Kiyoshi Kurosawa. Her first-grade film Humongous! (2020) got selected for the Critics’ Week in Cannes. Night Train is the adaptation of a homonymous comic book by Gin Miyoshi. Although the style of the book is quite simple, the filmmaker's mise-en-scène is phantasmatic; the protagonist is a girl who looks like a ghost floating between dream and reality. The texture of the film and its lighting create experimental and cinematographic poetry. Aya Kawazoe's cinema goes beyond the context of the story and the characters’ dialogues, concentrating primarily on the image and the sound. She finally asks the fundamental question: What is cinema?” — Nanako Tsukidate
This film was chosen by Nanako Tsukidate, who was born in Japan but is currently based in Paris. She was the programmer of the European Cinema section of the Hiroshima International Film Festival from 2015 to 2018 and part of the short film committee at Cannes’ Critics’ Week from 2019 to 2021. She is currently a consultant of Giornate degli Autori in Venice and a member of the short film committee at the Riga International Film Festival. Tsukidate is a co-producer of Following the Sound, a film directed by Kyoshi Sugita.
The beach and its sunbathers. A series of sketches, small moments that culminate in a wry, loving portrait of a Sunday at the beach.