“The pedigree of the participants… underlines the city’s place at the crossroads of global hipsterism. But the film also serves as a reminder that some of Tokyo’s most memorable chroniclers have been visitors, looking in from the outside.” —The New York Times

A distinguished trio of non-Japanese filmmakers converge to offer wildly varying and accomplished short films that take inspiration from, and are shot entirely within, Tokyo. French director Michel Gondry leads with Interior Design, a characteristically whimsical fable about existential anxiety and corporeal metamorphosis in an aimless young woman who moves to Tokyo with her amateur filmmaker boyfriend; in Merde, French director Leos Carax introduces his own unique “Godzilla” in the form of a mysterious sewer-dwelling man who devours cash and chrysanthemums while terrorizing Tokyo’s streets (and later reappears in the director’s 2012 film Holy Motors); and, finally, Cannes Palme d’Or-winning Korean director Bong Joon-ho imagines a surreal romance between a hikikomori (shut-in) who falls in love with a pizza delivery girl in Shaking Tokyo.

2008, France/Japan/South Korea/Germany, 110 min., 35mm, in Japanese and French with English subtitles. Directed by Michel Gondry, Leos Carax, Bong Joon-ho. With Ayako Fujitani, Ryo Kase, Denis Lavant, Teruyuki Kagawa, Yu Aoi.

Visit https://www.japansociety.org/event/tokyo for more info!