Issue:
May 2024
Join the Film Committee
Join us on Tuesday, May 21 at 6 pm for a sneak preview of the enigmatic, otherworldly romance Who Were We?, a film that plays with the imagination as it evokes the great mysteries of existence and the unknowable nature of love. Set amid the magnificent, forested landscape of Sado Island, with dazzling cinematography and a haunting soundtrack, it is poetry in motion, both visually ravishing and metaphysically beguiling. The second feature from rising arthouse director Tetsuya Tomina, Who Were We? follows a young woman (Nana Komatsu) who awakens in a long-abandoned gold-mining town with no memory of her past. She is rescued by a female cleaner named Kii (Shinobu Otake), who provides shelter, friendship, and a job on the cleaning staff. The young woman finds herself strangely drawn to the area’s night security guard – a man named Ao (Ryuhei Matsuda). When they discover he feels the same way, they begin asking questions that don’t seem to have answers. The idea for the film came to Tomina as he was finishing his debut feature, which was also shot on Sado Island, once the site of a gold-mining boom that began in the 1500s. But the filmmaker discovered a dark historical side to the economic prosperity. During the Edo period (1603-1868), the ruling Tokugawa shogunate would send criminals and indigents to the island, forcing them to work in the mines in harsh conditions, often resulting in their deaths. “I wanted to make a film so they would not be forgotten in the future,” Tomina said. The director will be joined by producer Mina Hatanaka and Kabuki star Sennosuke Kataoka for the Q&A session after the screening. (Who Were We?, Japan, 2024, 101 minutes, in Japanese with English subtitles)
Karen Severns is chair of the FCCJ Film Committee
