Japanese Movies at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema: Wood Job!

Directed by: Shinobu Yaguchi
Starring: Shota Sometani, Masami Nagasawa, Hideaki Ito
2014, 116″ (comedy)

Yuki is 18, a take-life-as-it-comes young lad just out of high school, where he has failed his university-entrance exams and been dumped by his girlfriend. Looking at pamphlets outlining other options he might follow, he is captivated by a girl pictured in one of them and signs up for a year as a “green” trainee, learning the basics of forestry. A month of basic training later, he ends up in Kamusari, a village beyond cell-phone service deep in the wooded mountains of rural Japan whose population is outnumbered by the local deer and pit vipers. His instructor/landlord/mentor Yoki is a wild man, the work is hard, dirty, and dangerous, and Yuki is desperately looking for a way to escape when he realizes that the girl in the picture, Naoki, is living right there in the village with him.

Thus encouraged, he stays on and gradually finds his place both at work and in the village. The question now is the course of his relationship with Naoki, and his place among the celebrants of a mysterious local festival, about which the others will tell him nothing…

Presented by: The Japan Foundation, Toronto and the Consulate-General of Japan in Toronto
Community Partner: Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre

©2014 WJ!PC