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The Town of Whales

Original title: Kujira no machi
Year: 2012
Running time: 70 min.
Country: Japan
Director: Keiko Tsuruoka
Screenwriter: Keiko Tsuruoka
Cast: Momoko Tobita, Sui Katano, Sakiko Yamaguchi, Kentaro Sato, Masaru Nakashima
Cinematography: Kenta Sasaki
Genre: Drama
Synopsis: Machi, Tomohiko and Hotaru attend the same high school. Machi misses her older brother, who disappeared six years earlier. The trio takes up his trail, which leads them first to Tokyo and then across the sea.
Together, these two girls and a boy comprise a fragile love triangle. It is a game of attraction and boundary setting, of closeness and distance. The three of them are at an age marked by profound insecurity and a constant desire to search, as well as by curiosity and the spirit of discovery. These changing states and moods dictate the rhythm of Keiko Tsuruoka’s directorial debut. She observes the trio again and again as they drift through their summer holidays – in the swimming pool, going for a walk, hanging around doing nothing. If life doesn’t have a dramatic structure yet, then the film doesn’t need one either. Moments are all that count, and each one has its own special significance: Such as when Machi receives a crate of yellow peaches from a friend of her brother, which makes her feel the sadness of her loss all the more clearly. The journey of these three young people is filled with such moments, which they experience together and which help them understand one other.

Awards: 2013: BAFICI: Official Selection

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User history

The Town of Whales

2012

Keiko Tsuruoka