Midnight Screenings 2007 / Akumu tantei / Japan 2006
A traumatised youngster suffers from an ability to enter into people’s dreams. A detective is handling the case of a madman who kills his victims both in their dreams and in reality. Will the two of them be able to stop the murderer? Cult director Shinya Tsukamoto brings his traditional themes of the city and carnality into the world of nightmares.
Police in an unnamed Japanese metropolis are left flustered by some strange deaths. From behind the apparent suicides emerges a man with the mysterious name of “0” who the victims called from their mobile phones just before their deaths. “0” was then able to enter into their dreams and kill them both there and in reality. The investigation takes place over two storylines: while the detectives are looking for the murderer in the real world, their young colleague Keiko, who is on her first field case, is tasked with stopping him in the dream world. She therefore elicits the co-operation of a suicidal young man traumatised from childhood who is able to enter into the dreams of others. In this, his 10th film, Shinya Tsukamoto enriches his peculiar form of poetics on estranged relationships, cold modern architecture, and extreme forms of corporeality with a plot not unlike that of the horror series A Nightmare on Elm Street.
106 min / Color, 35 mm
Director Shinya Tsukamoto
/ Screenplay Shinya Tsukamoto
/ Dir. of Photography Shinya Tsukamoto
/ Music Chu Ishikawa
/ Editor Shinya Tsukamoto
/ Producer Shinya Tsukamoto, Shinichi Kawahara, Yumiko Takebe, Taku Ushiyama
/ Production Movie-Eye Entertainment
/ Cast Ryuhei Matsuda, hitomi, Masanobu Ando, Ren Ohsugi, Yoshido Harda, Shinya Tsukamoto
/ Contact Movie-Eye Entertainment, Arclight Films US
www: www.akumu-tantei.com/index.html
Shinya Tsukamoto (b. 1960, Tokio) was already making 8mm movies in secondary school, where he also began taking an interest in the theatre. He later made a living making commercials and commercial films, and had a try at just about all of the film trades from lighting, through editing, to production. He won cult status with Tetsuo (1989), the story of a clerk who gradually turns into a pile of metal. Its sequel, Tetsuo II: Body Hammer (1992) was also a success. His films Tokyo Fist (1995), Gemini (Sôseiji, 1999) and Snake of June (Rokugatsu no hebi, 2002) were screened at the Karlovy Vary IFF. Tsukamoto often acts in his own films and those of his colleagues, such as in Ichi the Killer (Koroshiya 1, 2001) by Takashi Miike. His work and unmistakable poetic style is acknowledged by directors such as Quentin Tarantino, Gaspar Noé, and Darren Aronofsky.
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Arclight Films US
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