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In the plethora of family dramas coming out of Japan, it is always a pleasure to see films that manage to stray away from the “Koreeda path” even if this applies just to a few details. Tatsuro Nishikawa, in his feature debut/graduation film, attempts to do just that by including a number of additional elements, most of which revolve around the protagonist and a sense of quirky humor that permeates large parts of the movie.

The Other Home is screening at Camera Japan

17-year-old Hagi is a conflicting personality. His family situation is quite good, as his parents get along quite nicely, to the point that there are never any fights at home, his relationship with his sister is harmonic and he also has a girlfriend, although she is a bit disappointed with him. However, a few things are amiss. Hagi does not want to go to school, since...

Even though the most of commercial success of Japanese cinema is reserved for other kinds of stories that have a significant fan base in other types of media, there is a certain surge in socially aware original cinematic ones in the last years. Last year’s Palme d’Or winner Hirokazu Koreeda and the winning film “Shoplifters” could serve as an easy example, but it is not the only one. “Five Million Dollar Life”, directed by the Korean-Japanese first-timer Moon Sung-ho must also be taken into an account. The film premiered recently at Shanghai International Film Festival before departing on a festival tour and hitting the theatres nationally in July. We were lucky enough to catch it at its North American premiere at New York Asian Film Festival.

The film starts with a bold, while not exactly confirmed, calculation that an average Japanese earns about the same amount of money...