Issue:
October 2025
Join the Film Committee …
Join us on Thursday, October 19 at 6 pm for a sneak preview screening of Baku Kinoshita’s singular debut feature, The Last Blossom, which premiered in competition at the 2025 Annecy International Animation Festival, where it drew comparisons to work by Martin Scorsese and Takeshi Kitano. The screening is part of our annual collaborative event with the Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF). The Last Blossom deploys deceptively simple, color-soaked 2D animation to take audiences on an unusual and moving journey of redemption — with a housenka (garden balsam) as their guide. The story follows the life and impending death of Akutsu, a longtime prison inmate who is apparently unphased when he begins hearing the voice of a potted balsam in a can, his only cellmate. Egged on by its sarcastic remarks, Akutsu recalls life back in 1986, when he was a small-time yakuza living in a shabby apartment with a small family, before he was lured into taking the fall for another gangster’s crime. He sent letters but never heard from his family again. Now that his “life’s lamplight has just about flickered out,” Akutsu and his noisy cellmate attempt to discover what happened before it’s too late. Director Baku Kinoshita, who has already had a hit anime series on TV (“Odd Taxi”), is included in TIFF’s Animation Section and will be on hand for the Q&A session after the FCCJ screening. (The Last Blossom, Japan, 2025, 90 minutes, in Japanese with English subtitles).
Karen Severns is chair of the FCCJ Film Committee
