Since its start in 1978, the Pia Film Festival has served as a proving ground for young Japanese indie filmmakers, with many of its prize winners going on to greater fame, if not always fortune. Among them are Ryosuke Hashiguchi ("Gururi no Koto"), Shinobu Yaguchi ("Happy Flight"), Naoko Ogigami ("Kamome Shokudo") and Kenji Uchida ("After School"), all of whom made their first theatrical features through the PFF Scholarship program.
The latest PFF Scholarship film, Takatsugu Naito's "Futoko" ("The Dark Harbor"), continues a movement, seen in the recent work of the above-mentioned sempai (teacher), toward more audience-friendly — or frankly commercial — themes and treatments, away from the sort of dark, knotty, personal films that once typified the indie scene in Japan.
This doesn't mean that Naito, whose second-ever film, "Midnight Pigskin Wolf," won him a PFF Scholarship in 2006, is selling out before he even gets properly started. A math major in college, whose first ambition was to become a TV comedy writer, he hardly fits the artsy indie director template. Also, in its own quirky way, "Futoko" is a personal film, with its clueless fisherman hero serving, Naito insists in a program interview, as a directorial stand-in. The emphasis, however, is less on the hero's angst, and more on deadpan, cutesy-nutsy gags.