The Short Shorts Film Festival & Asia is currently taking place at venues in Tokyo through June 26.
The largest festival of its kind in Asia, it gives award winners in its Official, Non-Fiction and Animation competitions the added bonus of being eligible for nominations at next year’s Academy Awards, an arrangement that has long helped make Short Shorts a magnet for filmmakers across the continent and beyond.
Screenings, including those in the International, Asia International and Japan sections of the Official Competition, are free (though some of the events are not). And no matter how short the films are, any Tokyoite would agree that time is hard to come by in the city. So, to help with any decisions moviegoers might make, what follows is a preview of some of the more interesting films on offer.
The Hedgehog
Director D. Mitry films his story about the war in Ukraine through the eyes of a 6-year-old girl who encounters a wounded Russian soldier and forms a tentative friendship with him, while her soldier father is off to the front. The complexities and contradictions of the war come into sharp focus with no pat resolution or moral other than the observation that even war cannot erase our common humanity.
Becoming Yamazushi
Hip-hop artist G Yamazawa directed this documentary about the Japanese restaurant his father and mother started in Durham, North Carolina, 37 years ago and their eventual triumph as uncompromising purveyors of quality Japanese cuisine. The fascinating portraits of the parents, who are outspoken and opinionated while being staunchly proud of their Japanese heritage, made me want to see more. Think of it as an American version of the 2011 documentary “Jiro Dreams of Sushi.”
Haulout
This documentary follows a lone marine biologist, Maxim Chakilev, as he observes the thousands of walruses that crowd onto a remote cape in Russian Siberia every fall. Stunning images of countless animals packed as close together as commuters on a rush-hour Yamanote Line train make this film both unforgettable and disturbing, with climate change given as a reason for the fatality-causing crush.
Liturgy of Anti-Tank Obstacles
In this nearly wordless documentary, Ukrainian director Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk follows a group of sculptors as they segue from making statues of Jesus and the Virgin Mary to constructing anti-tank obstacles from steel girders. Without delivering an obvious message, the film brings home the indomitability and ingenuity of the Ukrainian resistance.
A Short Story
In this mesmerizing and thought-provoking short by Chinese filmmaker Gi Gan, a black cat goes on a quest to answer the question, “What is the most precious thing in the world?” A scarecrow he encounters doesn’t have the answer but knows three “weirdos” who may, including a demon who doubles as a stage magician. Nothing is obvious in the telling of this “short story,” but everything is suggestive of deeper investigations into life’s mysteries.
Teleporting
In this docudrama by four Gen-Z women directors (two South Korean and two Japanese), four young women from South Korea and Japan connect via the messaging app Line during the pandemic and, using avatars to mask their identities and with English as their lingua franca, become online friends. Safe in their anonymity, they comment freely on the difficulties and dangers of living as women in their respective countries and find many commonalities, from pervasive sexual harassment to oppressive gender roles forced on them by conservative elders. But the film, with the avatars joining happily together in defiance of pandemic-era travel restrictions, ends on a positive, energizing note.
For more information, visit shortshorts.org.
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