After premiering at the 2013 Tokyo International Film Festival, Hirobumi Watanabe's slacker comedy "Soshite Dorobune wa Yuku (And the Mud Ship Sails Away)" became an international festival favorite, and it's easy to see why.
Made on a zero budget in Jim Jarmusch-ian black and white, this debut feature is grounded in Watanabe's own scuffling life in his native Otawara, a town in the wilds of Tochigi Prefecture.
Knowingly ironic, but totally unpretentious, the film also presumes the audience has zilch acquaintance with Japanese culture, pop or otherwise. The Peter Pan-ish hero, Takashi (Kiyohiko Shibukawa), with his marginal lifestyle and who-cares attitude might as well be living in a gritty, provincial anywhere — say Jarmusch's Cleveland in "Stranger Than Paradise" — and audiences in Rotterdam (Camera Japan Festival), London (Raindance Film Festival) and Frankfurt (Nippon Connection), among others, could identify.