Screening event of new movie "Nijuurokuya Machi" during the 30th Tokyo International Film Festival

The screening event of new movie "Nijuurokuya Machi" during the 30th Tokyo International Film Festival was held at TOHO Cinemas Roppongi Hills on 27 October which was attended by the director Koshikawa Michio and cast members Iura Arata and Kurokawa Mei. The movie will be shown in cinemas from 23 December.

The story which is based on the same-titled novel by Saeki Kazumi, features Kurokawa as the main character Yumi who lost everything due to the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami and is now living with her aunt in Iwaki, Fukushima, where the latter has a construction company. When she goes to work at a small restaurant owned by Sugitani (Iura), she finds that he has lost his memory for some reason and can't even remember who he is. However, he can still remember how to cook and tries to cope with his fear and loneliness with the help of the people around him. Yumi and Sugitani get increasingly drawn to each other and gradually begin an intimate relationship. As the 2 hour and 2 minute movie contains about 20 minutes worth of intimate scenes, it has been given the classification of R-18 i.e. only those above 18 years old are allowed to watch this.

Iura who was actually supposed to be absent from the screening event due to other work commitments, managed to reach the venue in time as his previous scheduled appointment had ended earlier than expected. He expressed his joy to be able to attend the first screening of this movie and hoped that everyone would be able to savour every moment in the film. Kurokawa also commented that she was nervous and thrilled to be able to watch the movie earlier than she expected and wished that everyone would enjoy this.

Koshikawa revealed that the birth of this movie was due to an idea given to him when his debut movie "Areno" was screened. A member of the audience who came from Iwaki asked if a movie could be made about Iwaki so the director decided to make this movie although the original setting was in Sendai. As for how they came to participate in this movie, Kurokawa said that she wanted to take on this role as a final challenge in her 20s after she read the script. Since she had worked with Koshikawa before, she believed that they would be able to make things work together based on the trust they had in each other. As for Iura who also worked with Koshikawa before, he said that being able to go all out in his acting and discuss with the director whenever he faced a problem were what made this filming very enjoyable for him.

Source: Eiga.com