A disillusioned filmmaker has an encounter with a young girl who has a ritual of repeating “Tomorrow is my birthday” everyday. He tries to communicate with her through his video camera.
Director: Hideaki Anno. AKA Ritual / 式日
Writers: Hideaki Anno (screenplay), Ayako Fujitani (novel).
Stars: Shunji Iwai, Ayako Fujitani, Jun Murakami, Shinobu Ôtake, Suzuki Matsuo.
Cinematographer: Yûichi Nagata.
Composer: Takashi Kako.
A major find! Thank you so much.
Anno’s latest film, the final EVANGELION movie, hits Amazon Prime in a few days
Intense, I thought daddy issues were rough.
joke’s aside – beautiful, very beautiful
I enjoyed myself a lot. Thanks Kiririn51 for recommending this.
Thank you so much, been looking for this one for a while. Reminds me of her. Thank you.
best movie i’ve seen, probably because i have mommy issues
Beautiful. I do not love it that much like other people because I do not have something to relate to, however, the background music with the vibe of the movie and AYAKO FUJITANI’S ACTING were mind blowing. I liked its happy ending and how you can see the process of overcoming a trauma by the girl.
I just stumbled across this movie. I didn’t think I would relate to it so much. the ending is what got me I bold crying, her confronting her trauma and the fact that her birthday is two days before mine. we all have so issues. I needed this cry.
I like the movie and I hope more people watch it.
Thank you for this upload of a very interesting psychodrama with neo-noirish influences and striking visuals– though i felt it could/should have been about 15 minutes shorter. But you can tell that the director was having so much fun with all the artistic touches and also perhaps wanted to suggest with his lengthy run-time the ennui and heavy complexity of the two characters’ respective psyches.
The touchingly plaintive, haunting music by pianist Takashi Kako is what carried the film for me, strongly reminiscent of Erik Satie’s impressionist works for solo piano, the exquisite Trois Gymnopedies and Trois Gnossiennes.
I suppose we can grant “poetic license” on how Japan’s long, long economic recession allowed the young woman to inhabit that 7-story commercial building all by herself and turn it into her multi-level temple of eccentricity (loved all those red umbrellas and old phones and other objects). We’ll infer that she also somehow came into some money to pay the utility bills and buy so much unusual stuff…. or else it was already in the abandoned office / manufacturing building.
Interesting to learn how the novelist-actress Ayako Fujitani is the daughter of that “colorful character” Steven Seagal (though not raised by him).
New download link added now for this one 🙂