Summer vacations seldom feel as vivid as when you’re 10 years old. It’s a charmed life, before adolescent hormones encroach on the simple pleasure of taking each day as it comes. Those days may be boring or alive with possibility and excitement; either way, homework can wait.
In “Sabakan,” first-time director Tomoki Kanazawa casts an affectionate eye back on his own childhood growing up in rural Nagasaki Prefecture in the 1980s. It’s a scrappy but immensely likable film, full of piquant details that cut through the haze of nostalgia.
The year is 1986 and Takaaki Hisada (Ichiro Banka) is a goofy fifth-grader with a fertile imagination and some typical schoolboy obsessions: pop idols, anime, boobs.