Filament
Tokujiro Sawada, the owner of a small photographic studio, lives in the imaginary town of Kouya. His wife left him ten years earlier for a younger man, and his two adult children aren’t thrilled by the fact that their father is a transvestite. The son is mixed up with a street gang and the daughter, once married to a mobster, has her own problems. This family appears to be on the brink of collapse.... (Festival information)
Though shot in a typical Japanese context the film appealingly combines different styles, rhythms and aesthetic forms, following the life of each member of a typical yet destructured family. Filament (how the son is called) reflects and confronts the longing for identity and feeling alive in today’s society with the traditional “system” of family. Especially the role of the father and the mother challenge us (as Christians) and lead to the question what value family and life has and may have.