First-day-screening event of new movie "Nijuurokuya Machi"

The first-day-screening event of new movie "Nijuurokuya Machi" was held at Theatre Shinjuku on 23 December which was attended by the director Koshikawa Michio and joint leads Iura Arata and Kurokawa Mei. 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 expressed his gratitude to everyone for the support of this movie which was produced by a very small team and the theatre for allowing them to screen the film. Kurokawa then followed up by saying that she had put in her best for this movie and had no regrets for her performance which was her last film in her 20s. The director also thanked the audience of 200 and expressed his joy to see that it was a full house. He revealed that he had known the leads for many years i.e. Iura for about 20 and Kurokawa when she was just 15 so he was filled with disbelief and happiness to be able to make a movie starring the two of them.

Iura commented that a few years after he made his debut, he was actually having doubts about continuing his acting career as he didn't enter the industry to become an actor in the first place. As such, he tried to distance himself for acting for a while until the director pulled him back into this word with the movie "Aoi Kuruma". Koshikawa revealed that he had a hard time locating Iura then because he didn't know which agency the latter belonged to which led Iura to remark jokingly that he really wanted to erase himself from the industry at that time. As such, it was great for him to be able to work with the director again after he had a restart in his career and that he was able to do what he did in this movie thanks to their longstanding relationship.

Source: Eiga.com