Filmvorführung Intolerance - im Anschluss Florian Höhr im Gespräch mit Regisseur Yoshida Keisuke

空白 Kûhaku

Director: YOSHIDA Keisuke
2021, 107 minutes, OmeU, DCP

This deeply moving drama is about a father who becomes furious after the death of his daughter and turns the lives of everyone involved in the tragic event upside down. It shows in a multi-layered way the behavior of people in extreme situations and raises questions about guilt, lies and forgiveness.

A hot-headed fisherman lives with his daughter, who goes to a secondary school. When she steals cosmetics from a supermarket, she is caught by the store manager, but manages to escape and is fatally injured by a car. The horrified father does not believe the theft took place and terrorizes the people involved in the death. In the end, everyone is cornered: the store manager, the driver of the car, but also the father, who had not been looking out for his daughter.

Director Yoshida Keisuke as a guest in Cologne

After the movie:
Florian Höhr in conversation with Yoshida Keisuke

Director and screenwriter Yoshida Keisuke was born in Saitama in 1975 and studied at Tokyo Visual Arts. He already shot independent films during his studies and was responsible for film lighting for director Tsukamoto Shinya. In 2006, he received an award for Nama natsu (Raw Summer) at the Yubari International Fantastic Film Festival. In 2008, he published and filmed the novel Junkissa Isobe (Cafe Isobe). Other films: Sankaku (Triangle, 2010), Basha uma san to biggu mausu (The Workhorse & the Bigmouth, 2013), Mugiko san to (My Little Sweet Pea, 2013), Gin no saji (Silver Spoon, 2014), Himeanôru (Himeanole, 2016) and Aitoshi no Airîn (I Love Irene, 2018). This was followed by Ken'en (Thicker Than Water, 2018), Burû (BLUE) and Kûhaku (Intolerance) in 2021 and the thriller-romance Kami wa mikaeri o motomeru (Good Seeks in Return) in 2022.

Florian Höhr studied film studies and sociology at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. Since 2013, he has been working for the Japanese film festival Nippon Connection, whose film program he has headed since 2019. As a freelance film mediator, he works for the DFF - Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum in Frankfurt am Main, among others.

Film Week
JFF - Japanese Film Festival

In recent years, the Japan Foundation Tokyo has launched several film festivals, which have been offered both as streaming programs and in the form of in-person screenings. Due to their great success, there will be a new edition this year: the JFF - Japanese Film Festival Special World Tour 2024 will present a selection of seven new Japanese films made in the past three years on screens in Germany, Mexico, Peru and Spain. In Germany, all films will be screened at the Japanese Cultural Institute Cologne, while a selection of individual titles will be shown in Hamburg (Kino Metropolis) and Berlin (Japanisch-Deutsches Zentrum).

Yoshida Keisuke, who directed BLUE/Burû (BLUE) and Kûhaku (Intolerance), will come to Germany especially for the festival, attend the screenings and hold discussions with the audience. A talk with Florian Höhr from Nippon Connection will take place in Cologne on March 8.

The films present the broad spectrum of current Japanese cinema, including moving dramas, a romantic comedy, mystery, suspense and horror. In Cologne, fans will get their money's worth almost every day, as the screenings will also take place outside the usual weekdays for the first time.