She is going to be a Mayor on x month x day the Movie, Murishinai Kegashinai Ashita mo Shigoto! New Nemuro Pro Wrestling Story, Following the Sound, The Beast of Comedy, Japanese Film Trailers

Welcome to the first trailer post of the year.

This one covers indie films and documentaries while the next one will cover ANIME and an anime-related documentary that was crowdfunded.

2024 started off pretty dramatically with an earthquake off the western coast of Japan. People from Fukui Prefecture to Ishikawa were told to evacuate in case of possible tsunami. As the day unfolded, things calmed down. The death toll stands at around ten people and there are still aftershocks expected and people are displaced. Let’s hope the disaster recovery efforts help people soon and as much as possible.

What are the first batch of films released this year?

She is going to be a Mayor on x month x day the Movie   

映画　◯月◯日、区長になる女。 「Eiga ◯tsuki ◯bi, Kuchou ni naru Onna」

Release Date: January 02nd, 2024

Duration: 110 mins.

Director: Peyounne Maki

Writer: N/A 

Starring: Yusaku Maezawa, Alexander Misurkin, Yozo Hirano, Shun Ogiso, Naoko Yamazaki,

Website Twitter: @eigakucho

Peyounne Maki is a playwright and director and founder of the theatre unit “Nusu-kai.” Her theatre projects have seen the likes of Tamae Ando participating while her celuloid work covers film and television, drama and documentary. For this film, she turns the camera on who will become the mayor of the place she currently lives in.

Synopsis: The Suginami ward, Tokyo, has a population of 570,000 and director Peyounne Maki is one of the locals. This documentary covers the issue of “Municipalism” and community self-governance and the catalyst for the project was when the director discovered that her apartment building was in danger of being knocked down due to a road expansion project and she began researching ways to stop it and working with other local residents to stop it from happening. This was the start of her journey into local politics and tracks her involvement in the 2022 mayoral race for the ward where Satoko Kishimoto defeated the incumbent mayor by just 187 votes.

Murishinai Kegashinai Ashita mo Shigoto! Shin Nemuro Pro Wrestling Story   

無理しない　ケガしない　明日も仕事！　新根室プロレス物語 「Murishinai Kegashinai Ashita mo Shigoto! Shin Nemuro Puroresu Monogatari」

Release Date: January 02nd, 2024

Duration: 79 mins.

Director: Hiroshi Minato

Writer: N/A 

Starring: Samson Miyamoto, Ossan Tiger, MC Mercy, TOMOYA, Nene-sama, Ken Yasuda & Narumi Shibata (Narration),

Website Twitter: @nnp_movie

Nemuro, Hokkaido. The home of a professional wrestling league made up of colourful characters which director Hiroshi Minato has chosen as his subject. The director has made documentaries in Hokkaido previously, including one called Daikoku-za Bay Blues (大黒座ベイ・ブルース) which depicts the owners and the titular mini theatre.

According to a Japanese pro-wrestling fan site, this film’s title is drawn from one of the subjects in the film, the late Samson Miyamoto, whose catchphrase was “Do not overdo it, do not get injured, work tomorrow!”

Synopsis: This is a documentary about the amateur professional wrestling organisation “Shin Nemuro Pro Wrestling” which is based in Nemuro, Hokkaido. The wrestling group was founded in 2006 by Samson Miyamoto, a toy store owner in Nemuro City. It collected together a host of colourful characters but in September 2007, Miyamoto was diagnosed with leiomyosarcoma, an incurable disease, and announced that Shin Nemuro Pro Wrestling would disband on December 31st of the same year. He passed away a couple of years after. A few years after that, members of the wrestling group he set up went back into the ring.

The documentary was originally broadcast on television. This theatrical cut adds new material and features narration from Ken Yasuda (The Actor).

Following the Sound 

彼方のうた 　「Kanata no Uta 」

Release Date: January 05th, 2024

Duration: 84 mins.

Director: Kyoshi Sugita

Writer: Kyoshi Sugita (Screenplay), 

Starring: An Ogawa, Yuko Nakamura, Hidekazu Mashima,

Website   Twitter: @kyoshisugita  IMDB

This work is the fourth feature directed by Kyoshi Sugita, following A Song I Remember, an absolute stunner of a drama, Follow the Light, and Haruhara-san’s Recorder. It is his first original film since A Song I Remember and it stars An Ogawa (A New Wind Blows, For Rei). This one played at the Busan International Film Festival 2023.

Synopsis: Spurred by feelings of grief over the mother she lost while in school, Haru, a 25-year-old woman who works as a bookstore clerk, watches over two older people. Takeshi, 45, and Yukiko, 40. They are troubled souls and all three embark on a journey. Haru takes along a cassette tape and recorder left behind by her mother and faces her own feelings for her mother and her grief as she spends time with the two.