Shion Sono

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Shiratori Tatsuhiko (Go Ayano) is a no-good bum and a loser. Wandering the streets one day, he meets Matora (Yusuke Iseya), a blond-haired devil who introduces him to a talent agency called Burst. Their specialty? Finding girls to work in the many hostess clubs, love hotels and lurid hole-in-the-walls of Kabukicho, Shinjuku’s infamous red-light district. It’s a dog-eat-dog world like no other, and in a neighbourhood where all sorts of bad people converge, and where sex, money and business mean life and death, Tatsuhiko finds himself in constant trouble. Struggling to stay on top, he soon finds himself caked in layer upon layer of greed, violence and lies, let alone the ever-looming threat of ruthless scouting rivals and the yakuza themselves!Read More »

Kyoko is a twenty-one-year-old artist who loves being at the center of attention. One day, feeling down, she lashes out against her assistant, sexually humiliating her in front of the rest of the staff. Suddenly someone yells “Cut!” and we realize that they are actually on a movie set.
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Japan’s oldest major movie studio asks a batch of venerable filmmakers to revive its high-brow soft-core Roman Porno series.

Review:
Whenever you hear of the director Sion Sono, you expect a little controversy, a little surrealism and something a little extreme. And with films like Love Exposure, Suicide Club and Strange Circus to name a few, he has earned the reputation of being a maverick director. But in some of his recent work, he has gotten onto themes which are surprisingly in contrast to his earlier work. Much like in the schoolgirl horror/fantasy Tag, he delves into themes which reflect the faults in present Japanese society. And in his latest film, Anti-Porno, Sono does it again with spectacular results. As part of the five-film saga of the Roman Porno Reboot, Sono certainly makes his mark.Read More »

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Three emotionally abused people from the fringes of society get locked in a convoluted love triangle. Yuu, a Catholic boy searching for true love ends up taking erotic photographs of women in public until he discovers Yoko, whom he sees as his Virgin Mary. Yoko, an antifamily, misandristic girl finds that her foster mother will be marrying Yuu’s father. Koike, an “original sinner”, coordinates a plan to convert Yuu’s family to her cult. Under her careful direction, their lives come crashing together in one fateful street fight.Read More »

From Busan International Film Festival:

High school student Kamogawa Yoshiro wakes up one day to discover that he has psychic superpowers. He also soon discovers that others in the city have the gift, only some of them are hellbent on causing trouble. He becomes embroiled in several strange incidents and eventually overcomes those seeking to do the city and its people harm, meeting the woman of his dreams along the way. A film that takes a different approach to the superhero genre by introducing a joyful young man who becomes a hero not by boasting of his superpowers but by overcoming temptation.
The Virgin Psychics is an adaptation of a serial comic strip that has been published in Weekly Young Magazine since 2009. It was later made into a TV show (also by SONO Sion) in 2013 and is the director’s fifth film. SONO is the same filmmaker who brought us Love & Peace, Shinjuku Swan, The Chasing World, and the independent film Whispering Star (scheduled to be released in theaters next year), which was shot in the area ravaged by the Fukushima nuclear power plant meltdown. (PARK Jin-hee)Read More »

Plot:Yu is a high school boy who lives with his father who became a priest after Yu’s mother died. But one day, a woman, Kaori, falls for Yu’s father although she knows that he is a priest. Yu is completely against this because he does not like Kaori’s eccentric presence intruding into the father and son’s peaceful life, and even more because she brings with her Yoko, the girl he fell in love with at first sight. He does not want the girl of his dreams to become a step-sister! One day, religious cult member Koike finds this so-called family an interesting group and kidnaps three of its members, leaving Yu behind on purpose hoping he will join the cult soon. He will not fall for Koike’s tricks, but instead will do anything to save the love of his life, Yoko, from this cult.Read More »

Set after the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, all 14-year-old Yuichi Sumida (Shota Sometani) wants to become is a regular boy and live a decent life. His environment though repeatedly drags him into the mud. He runs his parent’s rental boat business, which is located next to a nondescript lake. His mother frequently comes home with different men and soon she leaves him entirely. His father only comes around looking for money. Whenever Yuichi’s father is drunk he tells Yuichi “I wish you were dead.”Read More »

This is the highly experimental first film by the then 22-year-old Sono. The title means “I am Sono Sion!” Shot on 8mm, it is a free-wheeling, intimate, poetic cinematic journal in which the artist contemplates his life as he approaches his birthday. The film clearly reveals the experimental roots of a director whose subsequent work has made him a cult figure both inside and outside Japan.Read More »