Shinji Aoyama directs serious films that have won prestigious awards at festivals overseas — his 2000 drama “Eureka” won two prizes at Cannes, for example. He has also taught film at the Tama Art University and the Film School of Tokyo, all while publishing volumes of film criticism.
Accordingly, he would have once topped a list of directors unlikely to collaborate with Exile Tribe — a collective of all-male pop groups that bestrides the Japanese music scene like a sequined colossus.
And yet, after a gap of seven years since his last theatrical feature, Aoyama is back with “Living in the Sky,” a film based on a novel by Exile Tribe lyricist Masato Odake and starring Takanori Iwata, a member of Exile Tribe groups Exile and Sandaime J Soul Brothers.