Ryo’s days teaching 8th graders should be as ordinary as any other. Instead, she spends her energy mediating a tense atmosphere between the students and faculty, seeking a less authoritative relation with the students. For the young teens however there is only the frustration of having ones ambitions crushed by self-important adults. This bitterness uncoils in flashes of anger. When Ryo is subjected to the viciousness of 14-year-olds, her troubled past is bare, jarring her unstable emotions. By coincidence she encounters Koichi, a familiar face from her student days. He is an average man, working for the local electric power company. They share a connection as adults they barely possessed as classmates. Reliving their adolescent traumas, they discover the 14-year-old within them still smoulders just beneath their grown-up facade. They realize that to fight for the future, they need to make peace with the past.

Sceneggiatura / Screenplay Takahashi Izumi
Fotografia (colore) / Photography (colour) Kiyoaki Hashimoto
Montaggio / Editing Hiromasa Hirosue, Shinichi Fushima
Musica / Music Hideki Ikari
Suono / Sound Daisuke Hayashi
Interpreti / Cast Hiromasa Hirosue, Akie Namiki, Teruyuki Kagawa
Produzione / Production PFF Partners (PIA / TBS / TOKYO FM / IMAGICA /
NTT Resonant / Humax Cinema)
Anno di produzione / Year of production 2006
Durata / Running time 114’
Formato / Format 35mm

Hiromasa Hirosue

Born in 1978 in Kochi Prefecture in Japan, Hiromasa Hirosue began acting in small theater productions in his teens, and in 2001 formed with Takahashi Izumi (The Soup, One Morning) the unit “Gunjo-iro (Ultramarine)” and self-produced over twenty works of moving images together. He directed and starred in Sayonara Sayo-nara which won the Runner-up Award at the 2004 PFF Award Competition. The Lost Hum (2005) won the NETPAC Award at the International Film Festival Rotterdam 2006. Fourteen (16th PFF Scholarship Film) was screen in world premiere at the Pia Film festival 2006 and the international premiere at the International Film Festival Rotterdam 2007.