Out of This World

Colour, 35 mm
Japan, 2003, 123 min
Section: Official Selection

About the film

The film pays homage to a pioneering generation of young Japanese jazzmen who, after World War II, had to cope with their passion for a style of music linked with the victors – the Americans. During the war, jazz was unambiguously condemned as “the music of the enemy.” After the war, however, it returned and could be heard with new vitality in a country vacillating between hope and chaos. The protagonists of the story are a group of five young musicians from a band called the Lucky Strikers. In 1947 they were finally able to exchange their weapons for instruments. At the Enlisted Men’s Club (of the American army), the kindly manager, Sergeant Jim O’Brien, encourages them to explore their lifelong friendship with a musical form capable of wiping away the insurmountable obstacles between different cultures. At the same time, the young musicians find a means of communicating with men whom not long ago they saw as enemies – men who now applaud them.

About the director

Junji Sakamoto (b. 1954, Sakai) is one of the best-known Japanese independent filmmakers of the 1990s. He began as assistant to directors Sogo Ishii and Kazayuki Izutsu. In 1989 he made his debut with the story of a boxer trying to return to the ring, Knock Out! (Dotsuitarunen), which placed him among the most interesting of the beginners. Today he has thirteen titles to his credit as director, films which have won him universal attention at a number of international festivals. Face (Kao, 2000) brought him a Japanese Academy Award for Best Director and a nomination for Best Script, and was accepted for the competition at San Sebastian. The drama Another Battle (Shin jingi naki tatakai, 2000), inspired by the classic yakuza films of Kinji Fukasaku, was successfully shown at the Rotterdam IFF. Inspired by real political events, KT (2002) roused lively interest in the competition at the Berlinale.