13th New York Asian Film Festival

Jun 27 - Jul 14, 2014

Photo:

Why Don't You Play in Hell?

地獄でなぜ悪い

A back-to-bloody-basics film that pay tribute to old-school yakuza cinema and low-budget amateur filmmaking, Why Don't You Play in Hell? is based on a screenplay that bad-boy director Sono Sion (a NYAFF/Japan Cuts guest in 2009) wrote 17 years ago. Devoting most of their time and frantic energy to guerrilla filmmaking antics, it seems like it might be time for the "Fuck Bombers" to move on. A group of jobless film geeks, they're trying to turn Sasaki (Sakaguchi Tak), a young brawler, into their "new Bruce Lee," but the Bombers are nowhere near getting their action masterpiece made. New blood and inspiration come their way when an ambush set by a yakuza clan comes to a gory end in the home of boss Muto (Kunimura Jun), and is witnessed by Mitsuko, Muto's 10-year-old daughter and star of a toothpaste commercial. Ten years later, she's become a sultry, mean mess of a girl (played by 2014 Screen International Rising Star Award recipient, Nikaido Fumi). Determined to make his little girl a star, her father, fresh out of jail, crosses path with the gang of wannabe filmmakers, and gives the losers a once-in-a-lifetime chance to shoot their movie. To make this happen, the yakuza becomes the film production crew and the Fuck Bombers join the "real" action. Needless to say, things are about to get messy. In what Sono himself called "an action film about the love of 35mm," you'll definitely feel the love. And the blood.

Director: Sono Sion
Cast: Tomochika, Hoshino Gen, Hasegawa Hiroki, Nikaido Fumi, Tsutsumi Shinichi, Kunimura Jun
Languages: Japanese with English subtitles
2012; 119 min.; DCP

SCHEDULE:

Thursday July 10, 8:30pm
Japan Society

Q&A with actress Nikaido Fumi.

Screen International Rising Star Asia Award
Nikaido Fumi
二階堂ふみ

"Nikaido... disappears into her roles, creating characters that are radically different from each other, from the swaggering gangster's daughter in Why Don't You Play in Hell? and the bubbly Gothic Lolita girl in Mourning Recipe to a cool-eyed student in the coming-of-age drama Au Revoir l'eté." –Mark Schilling

Born in 1994 in Naha, Okinawa, Nikaido Fumi has graced Japanese screens from an early age, starting from her first TV drama, Juken no Kamisama, in 2007, and Yakusho Koji's directorial debut, the bizarre family comedy Toad's Oil, in 2009. She rose to international prominence in 2011, when she received the Marcello Mastroianni Award (a prize awarded to best newcomers) at the 2011 Venice Film Festival for her outstanding electrifying performance in Sion Sono's Himizu, jointly with co-star Sometani Shota (whose girlfriend she played).

Since then, she has appeared in Brain Man, alongside star actor Ikuta Toma, Miike Takashi's Lesson of Evil, and Tanada Yuki's Mourning Recipe. As part of a focus on the meteoric ascension of the 20-year-old former model and now full-fledged actress, NYAFF will present Fukada Koji's summer-at-the-beach drama Au Revoir l'eté, Sono's action comedy Why Don't You Play in Hell?, and My Man by Kumakiri Kazuyoshi.