kviff.com
News
Festival Guide
  • Tickets and Festival Pass
  • Accommodations
  • Transportation
  • Festival cinemas
  • No Barriers project
  • Kids at the festival
  • Festival Shop
Program
  • Catalogue of films
  • Accompanying programme
  • Archive of films
  • Audience award
  • KVIFF Talks
  • Film Entry
Film Industry
  • Industry accreditation
  • Film Industry at KVIFF
  • Industry Days Programme
  • KVIFF Eastern Promises
  • KVIFF Talents
Press
  • Press accreditation
  • Press Service
  • For download
  • Press releases
  • Photogallery
  • Videogallery
About the festival
  • Festival description
  • Programme sections
  • Awards
  • History
  • We support non-profits
  • Photogallery
  • Partners
  • Why We Support the Festival
  • Contacts
CZ
Sign in
Film Archive

Non-ko

Another View – Tokyo FilmeX Presents 2009 / Nonko 36sai Kaji tetsudai / Japan 2008

Kazuyoshi Kumakiri’s film offers a strongly empathetic and indiscriminately direct portrait of social outsiders in no-win situations. This time he focuses on an arid thirtysomething named Non-ko, who is forced to move back in with her parents after an unsuccessful bid as an actress. Then two men enter her dismal life.

Non-ko Non-ko

Synopsis

Nobuko dreamed of making it as an actress in Tokyo. Instead, the thirtysomething divorcee, whose filmography comprises a handful of adult movies, moved back to her small-town home where she helps her family maintain a Shinto shrine. Her friends call her by her stage name, Non-ko, a constant reminder of the desolate, ideal-deprived woman’s failure, as is the door to her room at her parents’ house, still covered with images of childhood heroes. Those around her have written Non-ko off, and even she has given up striving for happiness. Then suddenly two men enter her life: an idealistic, resolute young man, and her ex-husband. As is his style, the director employs a strongly empathetic and indiscriminately direct approach to outsiders. With the inclusion of unaffected sex scenes, which significantly help to flesh out the heroine’s character, the movie aligns itself with the legacy of sophisticated "women’s” erotic movies of 1970s Japan.

About the film

105 min / Color, 35 mm

Director Kazuyoshi Kumakiri / Screenplay Takashi Ujita / Dir. of Photography Ryuto Kondo / Music Akira Matsumoto / Editor Zensuke Hori / Producer Tomohiro Kobayashi, Gen Sato, Keiko Kusakabe / Production Non-Ko Film Partoners / Cast Maki Sakai, Gen Hoshino, Shingo Tsurumi, Eri Nitta / Contact There's Enterprise Inc.
www: www.nonko36.jp

About the director

Kazuyoshi Kumakiri

Kazuyoshi Kumakiri (b. 1974, Obihiro, Japan) numbers among the top talents trained for the Japanese film industry by the Osaka University of Arts. His graduation film served as his debut feature: Banquet of the Beasts (Kichiku dai enkai, 1997). This provocative meditation, shot along the lines of exploitation cinema with underground overtones, was screened at a number of international festivals, then released in foreign distribution. Although the film was also a success in Japan, it took four years before the director came out with his second feature, Hole in the Sky (Sora no ana, 2001). As a rule, Kumakiri develops motifs involving outsiders, isolation, and the condensed actions of people in critical situations. This holds true for both his own projects and those he makes as a director-for-hire, e.g. the melancholy, action sci-fi flick Freesia: Bullets Over Tears (Furiijia, 2007).

Contacts

There's Enterprise Inc.
Minahara Building 406, 4-8-4 Ginza, Chuo-ku, 104 0061, Tokyo
Japan
Phone: +81 3 515 94081
Fax: +81 3 515 94084
E-mail: [email protected]

Guests

Kazuyoshi Kumakiri
Film Director

Atsuko Morimune
Festival Organizer

Other partners
Newsletter

First-hand brews throughout the year.
Be among the first to learn about upcoming events and other news. We only send the newsletter when we have something to say.

Follow us on the web:

The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival
is part of the KVIFF Group family, which covers other projects as well:

© 2025 KVIFF GROUP

Rules for Visitors / Website visitors privacy policy / GTC / Personal Data Protection / Rules for Claim / Rules and Regulations / Contacts