AMIKO

ABOUT THE FILM:

In Japanese with English subtitles.

The young Amiko is obsessed with her classmate Aomi, a cool soccer player (and Radiohead fan) with whom she goes on a short, but memorable stroll through the park. There begins a fixation that carries over the entire school year: a period during which Amiko dare not speak to the boy, though he fills her every waking thought. So when he dares run away to the big city, Amiko becomes determined to find him, and tell him how she really feels – in other words, stalk him, on a journey that will take them from banal Nagano to the busy, anonymous streets of Tokyo. Described as a “distant cousin of Louis Malle’s ZAZIE DANS LE MÉTRO” by way of the uniquely DIY spirit of the Japanese self-made films (jishu-eiga) of the 1970s and 1980s, Yoko Yamanaka’s debut AMIKO is a gleefully irreverent, crystalline sour-sweet confection of extreme emotions, forged in the fiery pits of adolescence. Having dropped out of college herself to pursue this first feature, Yamanaka subverts the image of the schoolgirl into a strong counter-cultural figure, revealing what should soon become a cult character: a young punk in seifuku, resisting apathy, mass culture – and a boy’s indifference – one blazing conviction at a time.

FORMAT: DCP

DISTRIBUTOR: Kani Releasing

COUNTRY: Japan