Proxima Competition / Shokyakuro / Japan 2026
Ten-year-old Kozue, who definitely is not one of the popular kids at school, secretly spends her time tossing various objects into the school’s incinerator. When university student Jinta comes to her classroom and invites the children to a shadow play performance, something awakens inside Kozue, and her path toward adulthood begins. In this poetic tale based on a short story by Japanese author Kaori Ekuni (nicknamed the “female Murakami”), sunny summer days mix languidly with scenes of everyday life to reveal a silent yet unsettling confrontation with a world that often seems impenetrable to children’s eyes. Understanding family relationships, mortality, and one’s own emotions is significantly more complicated than turning things into ash.
Natalia Kozáková
97 min / Color, DCP
World premiere
Director Shuntaro Uchida
/ Screenplay Shuntaro Uchida, Koichi Kubodera na základě povídky / based on the short nove by Kaori Ekuni
/ Dir. of Photography Shin Yonekura
/ Music Riki Hidaka
/ Sound Izumi Matsuno
/ Editor Takaki Yokohama
/ Art Director Katsura Akutsu
/ Producer Takuma Nagao, Satoshi Takata
/ Production QUE LINDO, NEOPA
/ Cast Karin Taiki Shinozuka, Akiko Kikuchi, Takuma Nagao
/ Contact NEOPA
Shuntaro Uchida. Filmography: Portrait (2014), Pelican: 74 Years of Japanese Tradition (74-sai no Perikan wa pan o uru, 2017, doc.), Incinerator (Shokyakuro, 2026).
NEOPA
4-17 Sakuragaoka-cho, Shibuya-ku, 150-0031, Tokyo
Japan
E-mail: [email protected]
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