by Andrea Grunert

During his distinguished career as a director, Masato Harada (1949-2025), who passed away in December 2025, explored the pervasive nature of systemic corruption in Japanese society. Films such as Kamikaze Taxi (Fukushu no Tenshi, 1995), Spellbound (Jukaku, 1999), Killing for the Prosecution (Kensatsu gawa no zainin, 2018), Hell Dogs (Heru doggusu, 2022) and Bad Lands (2023) examine the complex intersections of politics, economics and crime, highlighting the often-blurred boundaries between these spheres. This article takes a closer look at Killing for the Prosecution, revealing the blurred lines between justice and crime.

A tale of revenge
In Killing for the Prosecution, the protagonist Takeshi Mogami (Takuya Kimura), is introduced as a public prosecutor who espouses an ideal of justice grounded in the pursuit of truth. During a law seminar, he asserts that a prosecutor who becomes committed to a narrative of his own making ceases to serve the law and instead undermines it. Several years later, Keiichirō Ōkino (Kazunari Ninomiya), one of the seminar attendees, joins Mogami at the Criminal Investigation Division. As Ōkino works alongside the man he admires, he gradually encounters a more ambiguous and troubling side of his mentor, prompting him to question both Mogami’s integrity and the ideals of justice he once championed.
One of the suspects in the murder case of an elderly couple is Shigeo Matsukura (Yoshi Sakō). It was revealed to the police that he and his older brother, who were both adolescents at the time, had committed the abduction and rape of a young girl. In an effort to conceal their crime, the perpetrators subsequently took the lives of their victim, in addition to the victim’s parents and brother. The sixteen-year-old Matsukura, was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment while his brother took his own life. Furthermore, Matsukura was the primary suspect in a separate murder case that occurred sixteen years prior to the murder of the elderly couple. On this occasion, the victim was a young student named Yuki, who was killed in her final year in middle school [That means that she was around fifteen years old, when she died; author’s note]. As Matsukura had remained stubbornly silent throughout all the interrogations, it had not been possible to prove his guilt. He had to be released and Yuki’s murder remained unsolved. Mogami is convinced that Matsukura is responsible for Yuki’s death. Yet he has a much deeper reason to convict the suspect. Brief flashbacks reveal that Mogami was friends with Yuki, and indeed was in love with her.
It is evident that Mogami swiftly directs the investigative efforts towards Matsukura. He wants the man found guilty at any cost. Especially since, during an interrogation conducted by Ōkino – which Mogami is overhearing from another room –, Matsukura confesses to Yuki’s murder. He even relishes revealing his guilt, because he knows that he can no longer be convicted of this crime, as the statute of limitations had expired [It was only in 2010 that a law was passed removing the statute of limitations for capital offence; author’s note]. The situation presents a dilemma for Mogami, who is becoming increasingly obsessed with Matsukura whom he wants to charge and convict for the latest murder. When another suspect emerges and the police begins to focus their attention on him, Mogami resorts to extreme measures, taking the law into his own hands.
Revenge is a universal theme and a persistent feature of Japanese culture. Its best-known example is arguably the story of the 47 ronin who avenged their lord’s honour in the early eighteenth century. In the annals of cinematic history, Akira Kurosawa’s seminal work The Bad Sleep Well (Warui yatsu hodo yoku nemuru, 1960) serves as another poignant example. Kurosawa’s film offers a compelling narrative that portrays self-justice as a desperate measure within a profoundly corrupt system, where the intertwined forces of politics, industry and organised crime perpetuate a pervasive sense of despair and hopelessness. In Harada’s Hell Dogs, the protagonist Gorō Idezuki (Jun’ichi Okada) is a police officer who has infiltrated a yakuza clan. The setting is the world of organised crime which is depicted as a violent underworld working under the disguise of a modern enterprise operating at a global level. In Akio Fukamachi’s novel Takenōchi-ke, the source material on which Hell Dogs is based, the emphasis is placed on Gorō’s identity crisis, his growing identification with his yakuza role and his disgust for the violent and not always legal methods of his superior at the police which come close to self-justice. In contrast, Harada shifts the focus on the ardent desire of revenge which determine Gorō’s actions. The protagonist is depicted as a solitary figure, embodying the archetype of the lone wolf hero. However, this persona is juxtaposed with the character’s profound personal trauma, stemming from his professional failure as a police officer to save the life of a woman he had a romantic attachment to. The police unit that recruited Gorō as an undercover agent operates covertly as a shadow organisation with the objective of targeting organised crime and dismantling the yakuza clan. It is evident that the objective of the mission is to perpetrate murder, a blatant contravention of the law. Hell Dogs provides no explanation as to who commissioned or controls the secret unit. The mere existence of such phenomena is indicative of systemic weakness within the legal system and wider society.

Beyond the law
Mogami is culpable of violating the law, fabricating evidence, collaborating with the yakuza and ultimately taking a life in order to bring Yuki’s murderer before the courts and secure a death sentence. Although his actions appear motivated by a desire for vengeance, they are nevertheless characterised by careful deliberation. While the film depicts him as committing a grave act of violence, it simultaneously cultivates ambiguity regarding the extent of his moral corruption, leaving open the question of whether he is as cold-blooded as his actions imply. As he unloads the gun he intends to use to kill his victim, he experiences a bout of vomiting. His ambiguity is also expressed by the trauma he suffers from after Yuki’s the murder. He seems to live primarily for his job. A few brief scenes depicting his private life make it clear that he is in a loveless marriage. In this respect, the character conforms to genre conventions. Nevertheless, there are also scenes that show Mogami in a private setting with friends and colleagues, which gives Takuya Kimura the opportunity to demonstrate a wider range of expressions – an opportunity he makes compelling use of.
Mogami has constructed a narrative of Matsukura’s guilt and is determined to uphold it at any cost. This determination leads him to manipulate those working alongside him, including Ōkino. The younger man remains committed to an idealised conception of justice, one that Mogami himself had promoted in the past. In response to a colleague’s remark that justice is a “hypocritical fantasy,” Ōkino replies: “I’m carrying the torch for Mogami’s justice.” But as he gradually realises that his superior’s actions are driven by a desire for retribution, he begins to question his behaviour. He reminds Mogami of his own words: “A prosecutor who is obsessed with his own idea of justice becomes a criminal.”

Law and justice in a broader context
While Ōkino remains committed to the truth and vents his frustration, Mogami defends his version of events: “Times change. So does justice. Today you must be obsessed with justice to be strong.” Above all, however, he justifies himself by emphasising his importance within the system as a public prosecutor who combats corruption. Alongside the revenge story, Harada develops a subplot in which Kazuki Tanno (Takehiro Hira), Mogami‘s friend since middle school, has been arrested for bribery. It turns out that Tanno is a victim of the scheming of his fabulously wealthy father-in-law, a politician tipped to be the next prime minister.
Harada takes a critical look at a political system that is rotten to the core. Mogami can only carry out his revenge with the help of the yakuza. In Killing for the Prosecution, the connection between the legal system and organised crime is driven by personal motives. These, however, suggest deeper and more complex connections between justice and crime. The relationship between Mogami and Suwabe (Yutaka Matsushige), a fixer for the yakuza he asks for help, is explained in the frame of Japan’s wartime past. Mogami’s grandfather and Suwabe’s father were both survivors of the 1944 Battle of Imphal, a devastating defeat for the Japanese Imperial Army. Suwabe expresses an lifelong gratitude to Mogami and his family, because Mogami’s grandfather rescued his father during the campaign. In a dream, Mogami is haunted by visions of the Japanese Imperial army’s harrowing retreat, which claimed the lives of thousands of soldiers. He sees himself surrounded by men dying from starvation and disease, caught amid the suffering and the chaos of the withdrawal.
The wartime subject is indicative of an unresolved past that continues to exert a profound influence of Japanese society, transcending temporal boundaries and spanning multiple generations. The one-sided portrayal of Japanese soldiers as victims can be viewed critically. Nevertheless, the collective memory of a nation that has sacrificed its own people – soldiers and civilians alike – is also an important factor that contributed to the rise of pacifism in post-war Japan. Pacifism is increasingly under threat in twenty-first century Japan. In his film, Harada explores the close connection between the legacy of World War II and contemporary anxieties surrounding remilitarisation. While Tanno’s father-in-law supports remilitarisation, Mogami maintains that prosecutors such as himself are essential to preventing both remilitarisation and the emergence of a new dictatorship.
The wartime experience can also be interpreted as a metaphor for the state of the legal system. The Battle of Imphal is regarded as one of Japan’s most poorly planned wartime operations. Harada draws a parallel between the inflexibility of many Japanese military commanders, who sacrificed their soldiers during the war, and Japan’s contemporary legal system, which is portrayed as rigid and deeply flawed. However, Mogami’s actions contradict his intentions, evoking the dogmatic authoritarianism that afflicted his grandfather’s generation.

Order and chaos
Although Ōkino does not accept Mogami’s justifications, the latter’s crimes suddenly seem trivial compared to those of the wartime Japanese military government or the machinations of certain politicians. However, the film does not descend into populist discourse, partly because it focuses on the moral dilemma that both Mogami and Ōkino have to face.
Although they are only addressed superficially, wartime history, re-militarisation and corruption at the top of the political hierarchy are elegantly integrated into the narrative. This also applies to the brief sequence in which demonstrators campaigning for a driving ban on elderly road users can be seen in the background. Later, when an elderly driver appears to have caused a fatal accident, the political campaign takes on an unexpected resonance in the narrative. Furthermore, Harada, an admirer of classic Hollywood cinema and jazz music, elegantly incorporates a song by Dinah Washington, a singer that Yuki liked, into the soundtrack. The term “elegant” is also applicable to the visual design which is characterised by opulent framing, lighting and camera movements. Numerous shots of modern towers, an architecture dominated by glass and metal, linearity and shades of grey and blue suggest a world in order. These shots are in stark contrast with the carnivalesque atmosphere in a narrow street where street artists perform and people feast. Not less chaotic is the party sequence in which Matsukura and his lawyers celebrate their success, Matsukura having been found not guilty in the murder case of the elderly couple. Tanno’s funeral service seems just as much as a farce, with professional mourners moving rhythmically in front of a huge portrait of the deceased who has been sacrificed by his father-in-law.

Critical views on the legal system
Harada’s film is divided into three chapters, with each chapter being represented by a tarot card. The initial chapters bear the titles “The Magicians” and “The Judgment”, respectively, while the concluding chapter is entitled “The Fool”. One may ask whether Mogami resembles the Fool in the tarot, in the sense that he cannot be captured by his opponents and is therefore invulnerable to defeat. Matsukura is depicted in a highly negative light, as a monster, an unpleasant and abject individual, on the verge of madness, a person who disrupts the established order. This clichéd depiction of the villain serves to mitigate the perceived culpability of the prosecutor. Nevertheless, Harada refrains from straightforward identification with Mogami, whose actions are challenged by Ōkino’s pursuit of truth.
The search for truth is a prominent theme in many recent Japanese television series taking place in the world of law and justice. 99.9 – Criminal Lawyer (2016, 2018 and 2021), Ichikei’s Crow – The Criminal Court Judges (2021), Antihero (2024), Destiny (2024), Okura- Cold Case Investigation (2024), Sins of Kujo (2026) and Tarusagi Bros. (2026) deal with corruption and illegal means made use of by the police and/or the prosecution. Mogami is advised by a superior to hand over the new murder case rather than risk losing it. This is explained by the pressure on Japanese prosecutors to achieve a 99.9 % conviction rate, a theme that lies at the heart of the series 99.9% – Criminal Lawyer. Tarusagi Bros. centres on the themes of revenge and the statute of limitations: two brothers, both police officers, seek revenge for the murder of their parents which occurred before the new law abolishing limitation came into effect.
Killing for the Prosecution deals very obviously with topics which concern present-day Japan without delving deeply enough into most of its themes. This apparent superficiality might leave viewers feeling dissatisfied and it negatively impacts the critical portrayal of the legal system. However, the conflicting motivations that drive the main characters produce nuanced human portraits and expose the moral ambiguity at the heart of the narrative, inviting viewers to draw their own conclusions.

© Yu Zhe

By Andrea Grunert

 

I am writing these lines after attending the internationally acclaimed short film festival in Oberhausen, a city in the Ruhr-area, once a major industrial heartland of Europe, known for its coal mining and steel production. The somewhat clinical charm of the hotel’s large, empty floors, devoid of decoration except for two modest flower pots, felt like the perfect setting for a film about loneliness, a stage waiting to be filled with imagination. This is by no means a criticism of the hotel, which I found to be a comfortable and enjoyable place to stay. On the contrary, its atmosphere aligned well with the programme I was engaged in and proved conductive to creative thought.
The gnarled, leafless branches of the trees lining the two avenues close to the festival locations lent the area a bizarre air. Uninspiring pedestrianised streets with a few vacant premises bear witness to a lack of purchasing power in a region that had been grappling with social problems for decades. Nevertheless, the Ruhr region is a culturally thriving landscape that continually invites new discoveries. The conclusion, however, is that old factory buildings are being converted into cultural centres without distracting the gaze from everyday problems. Perhaps it is this discrepancy between a dull reality and creative richness on screen that adds to the festival’s vibrancy.

One festival and many facets
The Short Film Festival in Oberhausen is one of the region’s cultural highlights, attended by filmmakers from around the world. This year’s programme, as always extremely varied, demonstrated once again just how inspiring the event – now in its 72nd year – continues to be. And that the short film is alive and well.
In addition to the international competition, there was a German competition and a smaller competition with contributions from North Rhine-Westphalia, the federal state in which Oberhausen is located. Another section was dedicated to films for children and adolescents. Retrospectives, a competition for music videos from Germany, exhibitions and seminars contributed to the festival’s great diversity. One of the main topics was a series of events dealing with the relationship between reality and fiction. Starting with films by James Mitchell and Sagar Kenyon, produced in the early days of cinema, between 1899 and 1912, the programmes embraced short films directed by Werner Herzog from the late 1960s to the 1980s and extended to recent productions made with the help of artificial intelligence.
The thematic exploration of the relationship between fiction and reality has its origins in the early days of cinema. It is also at the core of a number of films that are participating in the international competition, the section emphasised in my article. Across the fifty films presented in the international competition, several themes resonate strongly: a desire to make the invisible visible – bringing hidden secrets to light as well as drawing attention to people (and animals) at risk of disappearing – and, with that, an exploration of loss, grief and memory. The ongoing war in Ukraine casts a shadow over several of the works, while conflicts in other parts of the world, along with past wars whose wounds remain unhealed, also surface or resurface on screen. Yet violence is not portrayed solely through national or ethnic conflict; filmmakers also confront violence against nature and gender-based violence, offering powerful and often unsettling cinematic perspectives. It is clear that the dominant trend in this most prestigious festival section leans towards experimentation, with short films serving as a kind of refuge for it.

Reality and perception
Igor Zelić’s Opera (Croatia, 2026, 19 minutes) is one of these films dealing with perception. Shots of a group of buildings close to a forest are altered through the multi-layered manipulation of light sources. The appearance and/or disappearance of people in the frame also contributes to these changes, as does the feeling of time slipping away. Above all, however, it is the shifting lighting conditions that influence our perception of space and time. Daylight transforms what we see once more, leading to a surprising and dramatic turn.
Perception and representation are at the core of Adebukola Bodunrin’s Leaks in the Lines (USA/Canada, 2025, 4 minutes) which deals with the conflict between nature and organic growth and nature tamed by humans as in baroque garden architecture. The controlled nature, shaped by the principles Jacques Boyceau de la Baraudière outlined in his Traité du jardinage (1638), is exemplified in images of the gardens at Versailles castle. Through alternative editing of these images and fast moving laser engravings, and the superimposition of realist landscape architecture photographs with animated visuals, this imposed order is continually called into question.

Personal stories
The interplay with perception runs like a common thread through most films – both as theme and as means of cinematic expression. Some of these works are also deeply personal in nature. In You Are Seen (Morocco, 2025, 9 minutes), Zakaria Dinia takes a highly poetic approach. The film opens with images of a chameleon searching for water in the desert sand. These shots of the struggling creature repeatedly interrupt those showing an elderly man in a hospital, where he is undergoing dialysis. Images of patients patiently waiting for their treatment and then receiving it alongside shots of medical devices – tubes and monitors – stand in stark contrast to the almost archaic imagery of the solitary reptile. Yet both depict matters of life and death, pain and loneliness, and the struggle for survival.
Matthew Lancit’s Autobiography of My Diabetes (France/Canada, 2025, 30 minutes) recounts the discovery of the disease during the filmmaker’s childhood and provides detailed insights into its symptoms and consequences. However, the film goes beyond a straightforward personal documentary. Lancit closely intertwines his autobiographical narrative with cinema itself. The effects of diabetes on the body are evoked through film sequences, particularly drawn from the horror genre, featuring dissolving and melting bodies. The film also incorporates other references to cinema history, including a scene from The Godfather Part III (USA, 1990) in which Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) experiences a moment close to insulin shock – a rare depiction of this kind of physical vulnerability in a genre film. Diabetes leaves a lasting mark on the filmmaker’s life, just as cinema does. In Autobiography of My Diabetes, Lancit forges a connection between the two, using film as a means to engage with the disease both intellectually and emotionally.
Filming becomes a way of approaching trauma and grief in Teboho Edkins’ An Open Field (France/Germany/South Africa, 2025, 38 minutes). In the film, the director visits the site in Ethiopia where his brother Max died in an aeroplane crash in 2019. It opens with images of mourning villagers who live near the crash site. Members of the community explain their rituals to him and his father. Edkins remarks that he finds some comfort in knowing his brother died in a place where people have deeply rooted practices of mourning. An Open Field also gives space to the voices of the local men and women who recall the horror of the crash. A sequence of still images presents some of the victims – adults and children – underscoring the scale of the loss. Visiting the site for the first time, Edkins is shown recording with his microphone, capturing both the testimonies of the villagers and the ambient sounds of the landscape, as if trying to reach or preserve the voices of the dead. While many images resemble those of a conventional reportage, the filmmaker’s personal involvement transforms his work into a poetic reflection shaped by grief and memory and charged with deep emotion. It also includes critical comments on the accident. In a striking scene, Edkins’ father speaks with the father of the pilot – the pilot being held responsible for the crash by Boeing – raising questions about the company’s accountability. Both plane crashes (the other one having occurred a year earlier) were apparently caused by errors in the control software of the Boeing-developed 737 Max aeroplane. Edkins’ father is less fatalistic than his counterpart and is convinced that if many voices speak out against Boeing, they will not go unheard. The criticism of the American aeroplane manufacturer is reinforced by a Boeing advertisement claiming that the 737 Max offers “maximum safety”. The designation “Max” on the belly of a plane appears like an ironic reference to the filmmaker’s dead brother – an irony filled with much bitterness.

The invisible leaving traces
In Hulum (France, 2025, 22 minutes), Miguel Miceli gives a voice to someone who has none in today’s society: an undocumented worker from North Africa. Hulum (a word from the Arab language) means “the dream”, “the hidden”. The dream of a better life, the desire to escape misery has brought the nameless narrator to southern Spain, to Almeria. Here, like many of his compatriots and other illegal workers, he toils in the region’s greenhouses, known as the “Garden of Europe”, where fruit and vegetables are produced for the European market. The voice of the man, heard off-screen, describes the harsh working conditions and the system of exploitation that leaves little room for a normal life. Images show the shacks where the workers are housed. Repeatedly, we see footage of a person hidden beneath the chassis of a car driving through a barren landscape. The images and sounds resemble a dream that has turned into a nightmare. In the end, the narrator advises his brother not to follow the path he has chosen.
Ece Era’s Dogs and Dust (Turkey/Belgium, 2025, 14 minutes) is another work about invisibility and disappearance. The stray dogs and people living on a landfill site in a Turkish border region are about to vanish. The bulldozers have already arrived to clear the dump and to make way for the construction of a prison. The film needs no dialogue, commentary, or text to evoke strong thoughts and emotions about the erasure of life. Yet the mere indication that the prison landscape in Turkey is expanding adds another layer of meaning to Dogs and Dust.
Anna Heisterkamp’s Daylight (Ireland/USA, 2025, 21 minutes) deals openly with prisons. Her approach to the subject has a reportage-like quality, yet goes beyond conventional reportage. The focus is on the fourth new design for the Manhattan Detention Centre in New York’s Chinatown, which has been established in 1838. Time and again, it had come under harsh criticism for inhumane conditions and was reconstructed by reform-minded representatives of the judicial system in the spirit of their respective eras. Heisterkamp presents footage of the demolition of the most recent building, floor plans of the various structures built since the early nineteenth century, scenes from symposia on justice and architecture, and interviews with architects who work or have worked on prison design. But do these men and women really understand what they are building? Heisterkamp’s film exposes their perspective as little more than well-intentioned rhetoric from people far removed from those who typically end up in prison. Efforts at reform do not change the system. People disappear behind prison walls. Those walls are torn down by excavators, as if memories themselves were being buried under rubble.
The voiceless are also at the centre of Bhavya Karthikeyan’s Tea Powder (India, 2026, 23 minutes). However, Zuhra and Nila – two young women – are eager to find ways of resistance and try to be heard by secretly publishing the magazine Tea Powder in the South Indian city of Kozhikode during the 1970s. The black-and-white film tells, in fragments and through suggestion, a story of oppression and exploitation within Kozhikode’s Muslim community, where women are the primary victims. Because they are women, Zuhra and Nila cannot raise their voices publicly. And in the absence of formal educational institutions for girls and women, the neighbour’s daughter can only attend lessons with Nila in secret. Nila’s refusal to follow her fiancé to one of the Gulf countries is met with violence from her family. And yet, there is solidarity among women and there are moments of tenderness between the two female protagonists – a relation that itself represents a taboo.
Jerónimo Rincón Diaz’s El Salto (Colombia, 2025, 12 minutes) also relies very much on allusions, dispensing with text. The film’s description in the festival programme mentions an indigenous myth in which a god carved a path for rivers through a mountain range in order to protect the Bogotá plain from being flooded. At the centre of El Salto is a powerful waterfall plunging into the depths. But the images show not only the foaming waterfall and rushing rivers. Alongside realistic cinematography, there are distorted images that evoke associations with environmental pollution or the forced eviction of slums. The myth meets a complex present, pointing continuously to the power of nature and the fragility of human existence.

Memories
Memory and trauma are central themes in Flow (Rwanda, 2025, 22 minutes), directed by Kagoma Ya Twahirwa. A young woman, whose face is repeatedly shown in long takes, is still searching for a way to express the trauma following the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. In what resembles a therapy session, young people recount their experiences and the horrors they endured as children. Others took revenge and are now in prison. Flow does not show graphic violence. Instead, it is a work in which silence and the persistent focus on faces convey as much as words that describe memories and express grief.
Personal memories and political context are also interwoven in Alina Titorenko’s Women on fire (France, 2025, 20 minutes). The director portrays herself: a Russian woman studying at the FEMIS film school in Paris, where her festival entry was also produced. Titorenko hails from the Bryansk region, where belief in witchcraft has a long tradition. In Paris, she seeks out three female mediums and fortune-tellers, always in search of love and relief from her loneliness. Titorenko’s film depicts a way of dealing with life in an unknown environment, far from her roots. However, the ongoing war in Ukraine and its effects on people in Russia is not eclipsed. In a phone call with a young men in Russia, allusions to war and death are made, as well as the mention of homosexuality alludes to the oppression homosexuals undergo in present-day Russia.
The war in his country has driven the protagonist of Roman Khimei’s and Yarema Malashchuk’s Open World (Ukraine, 2026, 19 minutes) to Poland. From his room, the young Ukrainian man controls a mechanical avatar – a robot dog – as it moves through the countryside near his hometown and into his mother’s flat. At first, only the robot dog is shown, from within the voice of the man controlling it from a great distance can be heard. The robot, whose shape resembles a chest of drawers, may seem bizarre. Its encounters with people, who react to it with surprising calm (here you might realise that you are watching a film), create some moments of strangeness and also a sense of light-heartedness when the machine meets a little girl near a river. Yet the connection to home is also marked by dependence on an unstable video stream, a hint to the situation people in Ukraine and those who have left their country have to face.
In August and the War (Sweden, 2026, 14 minutes) by Leandro Netzell Cerón and Samori Tovatt, young August finds himself wondering whether he is ready to go to war for his country. The film is not lacking in humorous moments, such as when August who would rather make music, has a machine gun delivered to his home and struggles to get it out of the packing. There is no shortage of witty dialogues either. For instance, August’s mother asks him why he does not take on more responsibility by doing some housework or washing the laundry, instead of wanting to go off to war.

The fragility of nature
In Slow Dissolve (Germany/USA, 2026, 27 minutes), Andreas Bunte combines documentary material with reflections on transience. The film presents two different archives. In one, prehistoric ice is stored, which can be used to construct climate models that provide reliable information about the melting of the polar ice caps. In the Arctic, film reels are preserved to protect them from destruction and for “a post-apocalyptic future”. Memory, ecology and human catastrophes such as war are central themes of the short film Bunte made in collaboration with Library Stack. Scientific findings are conveyed through text panels, while long takes create a latent tension and emphasise a sense of vulnerability. The idea of transience is underlined by the fact that both the ice and the film material made of celluloid are as fragile as human memory itself.
The animated film Green Noise (Sweden, 2026, 8 minutes) by Jeuno Kim and Ewa Einhorn also deals with ecological patterns. In the fictitious city of Krabstadt, humans and houseplants are fighting against climate change and rising temperatures – until the day the plants go on strike. They no longer want to support their own exploitation in the name of saving the ecosystem. Using playful, humorous imagery and cheeky dialogue, Green Noise addresses highly topical issues. Like Bunte in Slow Dissolve, Kim and Einhorn also touch on the melting of the polar ice caps. However, they do so through satire, in an entertaining yet equally urgent way.

In conclusion
What remains of the festival? Some powerful images that will linger in memory. And not only the contributions with a clearly political, socially critical or philosophical dimension. Films like Opera (the International Jury Prize winner) or the also award-winning Dark Channel (China, 2025, 11 minutes) by Yu Zhe challenge our perception. The only setting of Yu Zhe’s film is a small channel, first filmed in the evening and then in daylight, as can be seen from the channel’s openings. The water level rises in the night and recedes again by daytime. A few people on two-wheeled vehicles occasionally pass through the narrow passage. A large spider remains motionless in its web on the ceiling. Nothing particularly unusual. Nor is it unusual for the everyday to be elevated into an object of art – we have known that since the Dada movement. But then, there is also this green frog, swimming through the water. And the next morning sitting more or less on a dry ground. An image that invites a great deal of reflection.
There is also the animation Slow, fast, slow by Jagoda Czarnek (Poland, 2025, 1 minute). A sleeping woman is rudely jolted awake by the noise of her alarm clock – and something unexpected happens. Czarnek’s film is a very short but refreshing cinematic experience.
The same applies to Nela Gluhak’s Toast (Croatia, 2025, 2 minutes). A female voice narrates that she has been given a toaster as a gift, and immediately the screen fills with countless variations of toasts: toasts filled, topped with cheese, decorated with mayonnaise … all accompanied by the word “toast”. And there are surprises here too. The humour lies in the rhythm and in the fact that nothing really happens. And this “nothing” is presented in a most enjoyable manner.
However, nothing speaks against a little joy. Because when you stepped outside the bubble of the cheerful international cinema crowd that had gathered for the festival, you immediately found yourself in a reality that was not quite as cheerful – though one where you can meet amazing people if you keep your eyes, your ears and your mind open.

by Andrea Grunert

Television is not so much the poor parent of the silver screen but more often equal to cinematic productions. This includes the Japanese series One Day: It´s A Wonderful Christmas Ado (One Day: Seiya no kara sawagi). The eleven episodes lasting 54 minutes each were first aired from October to December 2023 by Fuji TV. One of its directors is Masayuki Suzuki, known for the two Hero films (2007 and 2015). In addition, Toshiyuki Mitsuhashi and Ryosuke Yanagisawa were credited with directing a number of episodes. Now available on Rakuten Viki, the series’ cast unites many renowned actors: Kazunari Ninomiya, Takao Ōsawa, Miki Nakatani, Kōichi Satō and Yōsuke Eguchi.

Three characters – three stories
The action spans twenty-four hours, starting at midnight on the night before Christmas Eve (1) and takes place in the city of Yokohama. The main protagonists are a young man who has lost his memory (Ninomiya) and is chased by both the Yakuza and the police, a chef de cuisine (Ōsawa) who owns the restaurant where he works and a television reporter (Nakatani). The series follows their individual stories on this day that is fateful for all three of them, with their paths repeatedly crossing as the plot unfolds. Adding to this story are the experiences of several supporting characters, which not only enrich the series with a number of human portraits but also repeatedly lead to surprising twists in the narrative. These include Kikuzo, the restaurant’s maître d’ (Hideo Kurihara) and Tsuyumi, the sommelier (Yuki Sakurai); Sako (Riko Fukumoto), the chef’s daughter; Mitsutani (Yōsuke Eguchi) who works in the organized crime division of the Metropolitan Police in Tokyo; the police officers Karumiya (Wakana Matsumoto) and Yamada (Hideji Imai) and the investigator Yahata (Anne Nakamura) who has been assigned to keep tabs on Mitsutani. Another recurring character is a mysterious elderly man (Kōichi Satō) who is looking for his runaway dog. This subplot runs through the entire series until, in the end, the identity of the man is revealed. Along the way, the actions of the nameless individual trigger new plot developments often leading to positive changes.
“Time” is a main topic of which the clock in the opening credits of each episode is a constant reminder. The three main characters are engaged in a race against time. Within the twenty-four hours in which the story unfolds, they must carry out their various plans. The restaurant has to open at its usual time and the menu must be ready by then. At the port of Yokohama, a drug shipment from Mexico is scheduled to arrive at a specific time – something the police is determined to prevent. The man without memory must try to recover his past before then, in order not to fall victim to his pursuers. The television reporter seeks to establish the facts surrounding the amnesiac young man and secure a major story. The question is how the protagonists will use the limited time available to them to achieve their goals.
Indications of time are provided through on-screen displays of the current hour. The action starts on the night of 23 to 24 December on a public square in Yokohama where a young man wakes up next to a corpse. Remembering nothing – not even his own name – he is forced to ask himself whether it was him who shot the victim with the pistol he finds in his possession. He then receives a phone call from an unknown caller who addresses him as Seiji and advices him to run. While fleeing, Seiji ends up in chef Tokio Tachiaoi’s restaurant. At this time of night, only the chef is still in the kitchen. As Seiji runs through the restaurant and its kitchen, jumping across various tables, he is pursued by Tokio who, far less agile than the fugitive, knocks over a large pot. The contents – a sauce – spill across the floor. For the chef, this is a catastrophe, because the demi-glace sauce is a secret recipe for which his restaurant, Aoitai, specialized in western cuisine, is famous. Guests come solely for this dish, which has been passed down through generations, a tradition Tokio proudly continues. However, it is now too late to serve the famous sauce on Christmas Eve, as its preparation takes several days.
In this early sequence, two of the three main characters meet for the first time. The third main character is introduced a little later. Kikyo works as a journalist for a local television station. She is eager to report on the murder story, but the director of the station is more interested in entertainment than in news reporting. Instead of conducting in-depth research, Kikyo is asked to participate in a Christmas show. Nevertheless, she does not give up and continues investigating the murder case in which the young man suffering from amnesia seems to be involved. Her research will guide her to Tokio’s restaurant where the chef has recovered the firearm the man known as Seiji has lost.
Another link between the “restaurant” and the “television station” stories is created through Tokio’s daughter Sako, a young adult, who is an apprentice at the television station and supports Kikyo. The juxtaposition of various narrative strands – both main and secondary plots – creates a highly fragmented structure and, as a result, moments of tension. For example, the story of Seiji, whose real name is Yuta Amagi, is developed gradually in this way, with his true identity only being revealed later in the narrative. Seiji/Yuta is constantly on the run. His story is driven by movement, changing locations and chase sequences. The nameless elderly man is also crossing the city – even if in a slower pace – in search of his dog Flan (2), thereby finding his way both to the television studio and to Tokio’s restaurant. Other characters, too, are not confined to a single location. In one scene, all three main characters and several supporting characters converge in a stadium where Tokio’s daughter, kidnapped by the Yakuza, is held hostage. At times, the characters find themselves in the same place without being aware of one another – such as when Tokio and Kikyo witness an accident, involving Mitsutani, who is struck by a car while crossing a street. Flan also occasionally appears in the frame, only to disappear again shortly afterward.
“Disappearance“ is another important theme of the series. Tokio still mourns his wife, who died while giving birth to Sako. The sommelier’s partner disappeared several years ago, a loss from which she still suffers. When the dog’s owner finally meets the woman who told him about having seen Flan, the dog has already run off again. In the conservation the elderly man then has with the young woman disappearance becomes the central topic. The woman herself is also in the process of disappearing from the life of someone she once loved, as she intends to divorce her husband. It turns out that she is the wife of the maître d’ of the Aoitai. This and numerous other examples show that each character is more than mere background decoration, but possess an individual story of its own which contributes to the narrative.

Action and social criticism
The various encounters often lead to new complications. During the second chance encounter between Seiji/Yuta and Tokio, which this time takes place in the streets of Yokohama, the young fugitive runs into Tokio on his bicycle and causes him to fall. As a result of the collision, both men drop their smartphones which they accidentally exchange. Suddenly the Yakuza, who have caught the man whom they knew as Seiji, become aware of the restaurant, ignoring that the messages on their prisoner’s phone are not actually addressed to him. However, what could have given rise to violent action, takes a surprisingly different dramatic resolution.
Each of the three stories centred on the three main characters has its own distinct style. The ones involving Seiji/Yuta are dark and mysterious, as they are shaped by violence. Many scenes take place in the Adonis Club run by the young Yakuza boss Mizuki Fuehana (Taishi Nakagawa). The gloomy interiors are bathed in bluish light. In addition to scenes of physical violence – fights and torture scenes – chase sequences provide spectacular action. The Yakuza/police episode addresses a subject that appears again and again in Japanese series set in the world of law and politics: corruption at the highest levels of the police force or in the government. Series such as 99.9 – Criminal Lawyer (99.9 – Keiji senmon bengoshi, 2016, 2018 and 2021), Ichikei’s Crow – The Criminal Court Judges (Ichikei no karasu, 2021) and The Journalist (Shinbun kisha, 2022) revolve around this issue (3).
Social criticism might not be the main topic of One Day: It’s Wonderful Christmas Ado. Yet it is also part of the narrative set in the context of television. The director of the private television station for which Kikyo and Sako work is determined to reduce the broadcast time for news programmes. Instead he puts the focus on entertainment, a decision revealed by the rather dull show to be aired at Christmas Eve. It is suggested that pressure is made upon him to change his station’s policy and to prioritise entertainment. Moreover, he is forced to abandon reporting on the murder case, a situation which gives a hint to the interconnections between media, policy and crime. How sensationalist media function is also shown when the news present Seiji/Yuta as the prime suspect in the murder case without having any proof of his guilt. The working environment within the television station points to the rigid hierarchy of Japanese companies and – by extension – of Japanese society as a whole. If the director rejects a project, subordinates are expected to comply without objection. In contrast to her male colleagues, including the editor-in-chief, Kikyo remains unimpressed by the director’s threats. She does not only pursue her investigation into the murder case but manages to alter the programming to provide information about it. She intends to land a major journalistic scoop to advance her career – something that is particularly difficult for a woman in the male dominated media industry. At the same time, she is driven by the desire to uncover the truth, as she becomes increasingly convinced of Seiji’s innocence.

Humour and human tragedy
However, the most complex plot – in terms of narration and human portrayals – is the one taking place in the restaurant in which multiple storylines converge. It is also the most entertaining part, largely because of the humour in it. At its centre is the chef de cuisine in crisis, played by Takao Ōsawa in a slightly hysterical manner, which suits the character perfectly. Ōsawa, displaying continuous proof of his tremendous talent for comedy, plays Tokio as a sympathetic but stubborn character. Frequent close-ups reveal the chef’s inner struggle when he tries to summon his courage to confess the truth – that while pursuing Seiji/Yuta, he was the one who knocked over the pot of sauce. His long monologues, in which he unsolicitedly shares his knowledge of cooking, develop into extremely funny moments. One such moment occurs when he lectures about eggs, holding and contemplating an egg in his hand in a Hamlet-like pose. He does not notice that his employees are bored, yawning or casting desperate glances up at the ceiling.
It is obvious that the chef enjoys being at the centre of attention. His vanity is revealed in a number of situations including one when Kikyo has asked Sako to conduct a video interview at her father’s restaurant. The young woman interviews the sommelier who feels visibly insecure in front of the camera. During the filming, the viewer cannot avoid noticing that Tokio, sitting in the background, is eager to step into the frame at any moment. Again and again, he tries to draw attention to himself trough exaggerated facial expressions and gestures.
Tokio likes to intertwine his stories about food with reflections on human behaviour, for instance when he compares the redness of ketchup to strong emotions. Often choleric and hot-tempered, he is nevertheless empathetic and deeply concerned for his employees and his guests. He also shows genuine courage when, in a series of sequences in which his story once again intersects with Seiji’s, he is held hostage on a bus. Moreover, Tokio is a creative personality and able to detach himself from rigid traditions.
Alongside the many humorous moments, the plot related to the chef also contain moments of great reflection. The viewer learns that Tokio’s wife died giving birth to their daughter on 24 December. The white flowers that can be seen repeatedly in the frame from the second episode onward are the ones Tokio intends to bring to her grave that very day. While Sako hates Christmas Eve because it is the anniversary of her mother’s death, Tokio tells her that it is also a happy day, as her birth has been the dearest wish of the deceased. He states that, despite all the grief he is still struggling with, 24 December is a wonderful day. These moments could easily become overly sentimental, especially since the soft piano music accompanying the dialogue between father and daughter reinforces the sense of mourning. Yet Ōsawa’s naturalistic, highly nuanced performance rescues the scene from excessive melodrama.

Conclusion
While the scenes revolving around Seiji/Yuta are often dark in mood and those set in the television studio are brightly lit, the ones taking place in the restaurant are characterized by warm lighting. The lighting and the colour design of the three main stories precisely reflect the atmosphere that is distinctive to each of them. Tokio’s restaurant, as police officer Yamada suggests, is a magical place. And indeed, it is where some of the characters come together and long-lost individuals reappear. It is a space of self-discovery and creativity. Some of the characters become aware of these qualities there and others find or rediscover love, fittingly with the story’s time frame, the day before Christmas.
Here too, the series skilfully avoids the danger of sentimentality by adding a subtle touch of humour at the conclusion. The delicate balance between comedy and drama is never disrupted. On the contrary, One Day: It’s Wonderful Christmas Ado stands out as a highly successful and thoroughly entertaining blend of comedy and tragedy, suspense and romance.

Notes
(1) There is a prologue constituted of a series of shots set at Christmas Eve 2018, which show the three main protagonists in situations which are only explained in the following episodes. An epilogue consisting of a few sequences shows the three in 2024.

(2) Note the meaning of the dog’s name: Flan refers to a French custard dessert. The name is an indicator to the elderly man’s occupation.

(3) All three series mentioned here are available on Netflix.