Special Feature: Pathways to Directing Commercial Films
Gukoroku - Traces of Sin
- Onsite
- 7.21 (Mon) 17:00 Audio Visual Hall
©2017 『愚行録』製作委員会
Director: Kei ISHIKAWA
Cast: Satoshi TSUMABUKI, Hikari MITSUSHIMA, Keisuke KOIDE, Asami USUDA, Yui ICHIKAWA, Wakana MATSUMOTO, Tomoya NAKAMURA, Hidekazu MASHIMA, Mari HAMADA, Mitsuru HIRATA
2017 / Japan / 120min.
The 135th Naoki Prize nominee “Gukoroku”, a novel by Tokuro Nukui, is adapted into a film screenplay by Kosuke Mukai, the screenwriter behind works such as My Back Page (11). When an elite white-collar worker and his family are brutally murdered, it shakes the entire nation. After one year goes by without the killer being found, Tanaka, a journalist working for a weekly magazine, decides to revisit the case and starts conducting his own research. As he interviews acquaintances of the victims, the unexpected true characters of the victims and interviewees are slowly revealed. This is an ensemble mystery film that sheds light on the follies—envy and jealousy, vanity and mind games—that each and every one of us are guilty of committing on a daily basis. Kei Ishikawa’s feature film directorial debut, it made its world premiere at the Orizzonti Competition at the 73rd Venice International Film Festival.
Director: Kei ISHIKAWA
Kei Ishikawa studied directing at the Łódź Film School in Poland. His film, GUKOROKU – TRACES OF SIN (17), was selected for the Orizzonti Competition at the Venice International Film Festival and went on to win several awards, including the Shindo Kaneto Awards’ Silver Prize and the Morita Yoshimitsu Memorial New Director Award at the Yokohama Film Festival. Among its many accolades, Listen to the Universe (19) was named Best Japanese Film at the Mainichi Film Awards and received the Japan Academy Film Prize for best film of the year. In 2021, Ishikawa directed Arc (21), based on a story by world-renowned science fiction author Ken Liu. The following year, A MAN (22) was featured in the Orizzonti Competition at the Venice International Film Festival and chosen as the closing film at the Busan International Film Festival. The work attracted significant attention both domestically and internationally, winning a total of eight Japan Academy Film Prize awards, more than any other film that year, including the award for best film. Ishikawa’s latest work, A Pale View of Hills (25), was selected in the Un Certain Regard section at the 78th Cannes Film Festival.
