Only 26 years old when his debut feature “Brand New Landscape” screened in the Directors’ Fortnight sidebar at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Yuiga Danzuka is the latest young director from Japan to suddenly emerge on a world stage with a film that is nothing like rough-around-the-edges “apprentice work.”
Similar to others of his generational cohort, including Hiroshi Okuyama (“My Sunshine”), Yoko Yamanaka (“Desert of Namibia”) and Neo Sora (“Happyend”), Danzuka brings a fresh perspective to well-trod genres, in his case the dysfunctional family drama, based on his own experiences.
Set mostly in the more futuristic parts of Tokyo — Shibuya rather than Asakusa — “Brand New Landscape” rejects cliched neon-jungle imagery. The spaces in which the characters move may have nothing of the traditional about them, but they are also not viewed as alien or inhuman. The English title evokes the film’s acceptance — not overt celebration — that this is the Tokyo where many of Danzuka’s millennial generation live and work.
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