Subjects: Asian Cinema, Documentary, Health and Wellness Asian Studies
Unemployed in the wake of the pandemic, 26 year-old filmmaker Taku Aoyagi decides to try his luck in Tokyo. Short on worldly possessions but a bike and a phone, he becomes an Uber Eats rider. Now, he can decide his own hours and is free to choose when to take orders! But pedalling through deserted streets delivering boba tea to cloistered condos, he starts to wonder... what was it that Ken Loach said about the Uberization of society?
Thrillingly shot from a first-person perspective on a mixture of smartphones and GoPros, first-time vlogger-turned-director Taku Aoyagi invites the audience to join him on his daily rides speeding through a deserted city. Talking to himself and his peers, he asks: for a young, unemployed person with $40,000 of student debt, does gig-work offer a model for the future?
About the filmmakers
Taku AOYAGI, born in Yamanashi Prefecture in 1993, studied at the Japan Institute of the Moving Image. In 2018, he premiered his graduation film THE ROAD HE WALKS: A STORY OF HE-KUN (2017 / NC ’18) internationally at Nippon Connection. TOKYO UBER BLUES (2022 / NC ’23) is his first feature-length documentary.