Being Natural

Takashi Uno (Yohta Kawase, Rubber's Lover) wants little more from life than to play the bongo under the starlight. When his uncle passes, his freshly divorced cousin inherits their traditional country home and tasks the shy slacker with caring for it. Together with the town’s underdog grocer Sho, the three revert to a joyful childhood dynamic. Leisurely BBQ (the cheapest beef!) and cup noodles, it’s all fun and games until a family from Tokyo led by an unhinged patriarch (screen veteran Kanji Tsuda, Ju-On: The Grudge) and his enigmatic wife (Natsuki Mieda) manifest their desire to open a countryside café at all costs. 

Tadashi Nagayama – a protégé of the Yubari International Fantastic Film Festival since his Grand Prix-winning debut Journey of the Tortoise (2017) – baffles audience expectations at every turn with this gentle, mellow yet thoroughly eccentric pastoral comedy about the right to do nothing, Japan’s growing urban-rural divide and the country’s ongoing nuclear anxieties.  

2018 Fantasia Festival

Nagayama Tadashi was born in 1983 in Kanagawa, After his studies at the Tokyo Polytechnic university, he worked as an assistant cameraman before directing his first full-length feature in 2012, TOBIHI. This narrative immediately won a prize at the PIA Film Festival, underlining his promise and his talent. After working on commercials and as a freelance director/camera man, Nagayama luckily returned to the silver screen in 2016 with Journey of the Tortoise.