38th edition 2023 feature films
Tocka
Yoshitaka Kamada
Shoji runs a store in a desolate town in northern Japan. He longs to end his life so that his daughter will receive his life insurance money. Because suicide is not covered by his contract, he seeks help and asks desperate Saki and poor junkman Yukito to help him.
Yoshitaka Kamada was born in 1964 in Hokkaido, Japan. He started his filmmaking career in 1991 in television. His feature film debut was the “pink film” Sara in 1988; later, in 2005, je directed his first feature theatrical release, Yumeno, which was selected at the Montreal and Busan International Film Festivals.
- Scénario
- Hitomi KASE, Yoshitaka KAMADA
- Photographie
- Hiromitsu NISHIMURA
- Son
- Mikisuke SHIMAZU
- Montage
- Yoshitaka KAMADA
- Musique
- Neko SAITO
- Production
- Stance Company, Kamada Film
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A word from the selection committee :
“Tocka” is a Russian word that is untranslatable in any other language, Nabokov defined it at “its deepest and most painful, as a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause, or a dull ache of the soul.” This specific emotion permeates Kamada’s third feature film, much like the Siberian wind blowing over the city of Nemuro - on the far eastern coast of the Japanese archipelago - where most of the film takes place.
Just like Yuckito, the youngest character who picks up garbage in exchange for money, the filmmaker captures and transforms those that Japanese society has left behind, into singular individuals, whose soul he gently unveils. The expressions on their weathered faces are elegantly shot, and the desolate landscapes around them are magnified by colourful cinematography. Kamada’s film is a broad, sharp drama that reconnects with Japanese neorealism, not unlike Naguisa Oshima’s deeply moving Boy, which also ended on the island of Hokkaido.
- Paola Raiman