by Andrea Grunert

 

Right from the opening credits, a direct link is established between Fumihiko Sori’s Ichi (2008) and Kan Shimozawa’s short story “The Tale of Zatoichi” (“Zatōichi monogatari”, published in 1948), informing the viewer that the film is based on Shimozawa’s work of literature. Moreover, Ichi is a spin-off of a whole series of jidai geki films starring Shintarō Katsu in the role of Zatōichi (1), the itinerant blind masseur and master with the sword. In Sori’s film, Ichi is a woman, a blind wandering musician, and is played by Haruka Ayase. Her name is a direct play on “ichi” in “zatōichi” (2). And like the hero in the film series, Sori’s Ichi excels at swordfighting.
Ichi starts with an image of snowflakes against a night sky. In the next shot, a blind figure is making slow progress across a wintry landscape. Shots of snow-covered landscapes appear repeatedly in the film, and snow is also a reminder of two films featuring a female swordfighter: Lady Snowblood (Shurayuki-hime, Japan, 1973) and Lady Snowblood 2: Love Song of Vengeance (Shurayuki-hime: urami renga, Japan, 1974), both directed by Toshiya Fujita (3). Not unlike Yuki (Meiko Kaji), the heroine in Fujita’s films, Ichi kills efficiently. However, Yuki – whose name means “snow” – is trained to be a cold-blooded killer. She hacks and slashes her way through the narrative, driven solely by the desire for vengeance. Her aim is to fulfil her late mother’s wish and take revenge on the men who had murdered her husband and young child and had raped her, Yuki being the child resulting from this act of rape.
Ichi, after being expelled from a group of blind female itinerant musicians has her own motive for her pilgrimage round Japan. A flashback reveals that a blind swordfighter (Tetta Sugimoto) had placed her in the care of the wandering musicians when she was still a child. Now an adult, she is driven by the desire to find and reunite with this unnamed man who had once rescued her and whom she regards as her father. The film deliberately plays with the identity of her mentor, suggesting that he may even be the legendary blind swordsman Zatōichi. This connection is implied by their similar lightning-fast fighting style, reminiscent of the technique for which Zatōichi is renowned. Ichi herself has been taught this distinctive fighting style by her surrogate father, who visited her periodically when she was an adolescent, as a flashback reveals. Like Zatōichi in the film series, both Ichi and the unnamed swordfighter from her past wield a cane sword (shikomizue).
Sori’s female protagonist is depicted as exacting retribution for harm inflicted upon her, including the rape perpetrated by a male character. In contrast to Yuki, who has undergone a rigorous training regime turning her into a true killing machine, Ichi has primarily been taught by her mentor so that she can defend herself. However, both women are highly skilled combatants.

History and genre conventions
Ichi relies on the tradition of jidai geki (period films) and its subcategory the chanbara, swordfighting films. Quick midair drawing of the sword, slashing blades and acrobatic somersaults are part of the swordfighting choreography. Action is set in the 1830s/1840s, a period in which samurai were still the political rulers of Japan although the merchant class had accumulated the economic power to assume authority. In the social order established during the Tokugawa period, merchants belonged to the lowest rank (4), a status that was viewed with profound disdain by the samurai. Nevertheless, over the course of several centuries, their importance in Japanese society had increased exponentially.
Most of the narrative in Ichi takes place in the fictitious town of Bito. Once a vibrant post station (shukuba), it is now terrorized by a yakuza gang led by the brutal Banki (Shidō Nakamura). The Shirakawa clan, a group of chivalrous gamblers who are firmly integrated into the town’s social life is at risk of being eliminated by the bandits. The narrative of two rival gangs bears a striking resemblance to Akira Kurosawa’s renowned masterpiece Yojimbo (Yōjinbō, 1961). In Kurosawa’s jidai geki, a town is terrorized by yakuza gangs, who have been hired by two merchants in a bid to gain control of the region. In Yojimbo, the merchants are shown as exercising a dominant influence in social life of the town, this being an allusion to historical reality in the early nineteenth century and at the same time pointing to the importance of those with economic power in the context of post-war Japan.
In both films, the town that serves as a social microcosm is infested with corruption and crime. However, as in the first film in the Zatoichi series, the focus of Ichi is the conflict between two opposing yakuza gangs. Chōbei (Akira Emoto), the head of the Shirakawa clan who openly demonstrates his yakuza identity, is portrayed as a respectable and socially influential figure whose activities contribute positively to the town’s fortunes. His status within the community is further underscored by his formal attire when he welcomes an inspector from the shogunate, a scene that reinforces his position as a legitimate and respected member of the social order. In contrast, their hotchpotch clothes in garish colours and eye-catching patterns and wild hairstyles immediately identify the Banki gang as yakuza, the way they dress setting them apart from mainstream society.
The blue and grey kimonos worn by the men of the Shirakawa clan demonstrate the new social standing of these yakuza as fully integrated into the community. They are very clearly the “good” ones, defending a rightful cause against the “bad” Banki and his bandits. This portrayal of the Shirakawa clan follows the romanticized view of yakuza as honourable outlaws that is familiar from literature and cinema and also corresponds to the self-image of traditional yakuza (5). This romanticized image of the criminals in Ichi contrasts strongly with that in Kurosawa’s Yojimbo, where the two rival groups are both depicted as villainous.
While adhering to a conventional “good” versus “bad” narrative structure, Sori nevertheless emphasizes the hapless situation of outcasts such as Ichi and Banki. Banki was once a samurai but his face was disfigured by a burn, and this led to his expulsion from his clan and subsequent descent into criminality. Banki’s and also Ichi’s experiences are indicative of the widespread fear of physical disability in Japanese society. The ragged clothes worn by Ichi, in conjunction with the frequent shots of her and other visually-impaired musicians in the cold of winter, serve as a constant reminder of their impoverished existence on the margins of society.
However, the disabled in Ichi are presented as resourceful and particularly strong fighters. It is the inspector sent by the shogun who trembles with fear when threatened by one of Banki’s men. The samurai’s political impotence hints at the changing socio-political conditions in these last decades of the shogunate. It is, however, the character of Toma Fujihira (Takao Ōsawa), a samurai who meets Ichi by chance and remains by her side, who challenges and redefines conventional representations of masculinity and the warrior class. Although a formidable fighter with a wooden stick, Toma is unable to draw his sword. Hired by the Shirakawa as their yōjinbō, or bodyguard, he is unable to perform this task because of his inability. After their boss’s death, which he was not able to prevent, the vengeful Shirakawa brutally humiliate him, beating and kicking him.
Toma’s characterization contrasts sharply with the conventional image of the heroic samurai. He is a “fake hero” – a pretender whose reputation is built on a lie. The Shirakawa hired him because they believed that he had killed five of Banki’s men. In fact, it was Ichi who killed them to rescue Toma from death at the hands of the bandits. However, he does not set the record straight and although he feels remorse about taking credit for Ichi’s achievements, he does not reveal the truth. His silence on this therefore reinforces the film’s critique of masculine heroism. Toma’s behaviour exposes the discrepancy between the image of the invincible samurai and the vulnerability of the man behind that image.

De- and reconstructing traditional gender roles
Haruka Ayase plays the demanding role of the blind woman in a highly convincing manner with restrained expressions and gestures. This sober portrayal of the female protagonist follows jidai geki conventions in their representation of stoic, self-controlled swordsmen. She is a superheroine with the sword, refuting the commonly held belief that a woman’s role is that of the victim. The insistence on her fighting skills may, at first glance, seem simply a reversal of gender roles and genre conventions, with Ichi portrayed as a woman in a role traditionally associated with men. Her reluctance to engage in fights that do not concern her recalls numerous heroes in American westerns. She advises Toma against fighting for the Shirakawa clan because becoming involved in matters that concern only other people bears risks. However, her pilgrimage is determined not only by the search for her fatherly mentor and is also portrayed as the painful quest for a sense in life. Snow becomes a symbol of a world lacking the human warmth that Ichi – perhaps unconsciously – is looking for.
The portrayal of the male protagonist, Toma, and the deconstruction of masculinity contribute to the establishment of a central female figure, and here too, external motifs are brought to the fore. Toma’s repeated desperate attempts to draw his sword from its sheath allude to Freudian theories of castration anxiety. Just as Ichi is traumatized by her experience of loss, Toma’s inability to fight with a sword is similarly explained as the result of a childhood trauma.
The character Toma can be read as a deliberate subversion of the conventional ideal of samurai masculinity, traditionally associated with physical strength and emotional restraint. Rather than conforming to this archetype, Toma is characterized by a need to express himself verbally, by animated gestures, and by visible emotionalism. This is particularly evident in the scene following his first encounter with Ichi, in which his loquacious and expressive behaviour contrasts sharply with Ichi’s reserved demeanour. His frequent moments of comic relief, at times approaching slapstick, further destabilize the image of the samurai as a figure exhibiting serious and controlled masculine authority.
However, Toma’s lack of conventional masculinity in the film does not diminish his status. His emotional openness coexists with qualities traditionally coded as masculine such as courage, chivalry and a willingness to protect and care for others. In this sense, Toma represents a more differentiated model of masculinity in which emotional expressiveness and vulnerability are compatible with strength and honour. As a character, he therefore challenges the assumption that masculine identity must be grounded in stoicism and the suppression of emotions. This emerges as particularly significant in his relationship with Ichi. While Ichi exhibits a more conventional form of restrained and emotionally opaque behaviour that is strongly influenced by traditional representations of masculinity, Toma’s openness reveals the limitations of this kind of emotional detachment.

East meets West
In the last part of the film, Ichi has exchanged the rags she has so far worn for an elegant kimono and outer garments with highly symbolic meaning. Over the kimono she wears Toma’s green coat as an expression of honour for the man who has devoted his life to her and a light, black overcoat reminiscent of the kind worn by Zen Buddhist monks in a reference to their ideals of harmony and inner peace. In Bito, Ichi has found the path leading to enlightenment. She says to the boy Kotarō (Ryōsuke Shima), another character besides Toma whose kindness has touched her, that he has brought light into her life. This is a reference back to a sequence earlier in the film when the boy mistakenly brings Ichi a lantern which she clearly does not need. Here too, the focus is on an object that has a second, spiritual meaning. Ichi is now able to see the “inner light” and find the sense of humanity she has been longing for.

Conclusion
Ichi does not delve into the psychology of its protagonists, and its references to elements in other cinematic works (6) are often only superficial. However, its nuanced portrayal of the two main protagonists succeeds in reconstructing and redefining gender roles. The juxtaposition of seemingly contradictory attitudes such as strength and vulnerability allows the film to present gender roles not as a fixed identities but as something that is constructed, performed and can potentially be reconfigured.

Notes
(1) The first of the 26 films with Shintarō Katsu was released in 1962 and the last in 1989. In 2003, Takeshi Kitano directed Zatoichi: The Blind Swordsman (Zatōichi), a reboot of the popular franchise, in which he also starred.
(2) In the name Zatōichi, the part “zatō” refers to a blind masseur or musician in historical Japan. “Ichi” is the given name of both protagonists. “Zatō” was the lowest of four ranks in the Tōdōza, a guild created for blind persons during the Tokugawa or Edo period (1603-1868). Because blind people were subject to strict social stratification and had only limited employment options, they often worked as musicians or massage therapists (anma). Over time, “zatō” became synonymous with “blind person”.
(3) Fujita’s Lady Snowblood inspired Quentin Tarantino’s two Kill Bill films (USA, 2003/2004).
(4) In the Tokugawa period, the social order comprised four distinct classes: samurai, peasants, artisans and merchants.
(5) Traditional yakuza like to refer to themselves as ninkyō dantai (chivalrous organization). The Shirakawa clan is modelled on this idealized image of community-focused yakuza who act as protectors of a town.
(6) In the showdown scene between the two gangs, the dusty main street of the small town resembles very closely the street in Yojimbo. The setting in both films also clearly evokes the western, with a shop sign rattling in the wind in Ichi a further reminder of this Hollywood genre. And the film’s final sequence, in which the boy Kotarō calls after Ichi, asking if they will see each other again, is very similar to the final shots in George Stevens’s western Shane (USA, 1953).In a further parallel, the use of close-ups of Toma’s eyes in the duel scene with Banki recalls Sergio Leone’s framing and editing techniques in his spaghetti westerns.


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.