Howling / Humongous! / Interface (Shin-Dejima Festival)

When Shusaku Aota looks at his dead brother, he sees his own face. A howl echoes from somewhere he cannot place, and his bedridden pupil Kaoru Nogi appears without warning. As his brother’s memories mingle with his own, Shusaku begins to lose his bearings. Drawing on the short fiction of Hyakken Uchida, the film uses 16mm images and an unsettling soundscape to blur the line between life and death. A rising voice in Japanese cinema, Aya Kawazoe won Best Fiction Short at IndieLisboa for Howling. The programme also features Humongous!, selected for Cannes Critics’ Week and the New York Film Festival, and Interface, which received a Sonje Award Special Mention at the Busan International Film Festival.