The world is on fire, and one man does everything he can to avoid facing the impending apocalypse alone in this atmospheric zombie drama about the fear of losing everything you hold dear. In a remote house in the countryside, a man lives with his parrot and a mysterious creature locked in a cage, which he carefully feeds a daily ration of raw meat. While he tends to his chores in what appears to be a slow, steady routine, the world outside is falling apart as a mysterious virus spreads among humanity. All it takes is one unguarded moment for the fragile sense of security in the small house to shatter. Malin Dahl (Lantisar, 2019) has crafted a multilayered story of grief, beautifully captured through stunning cinematography—a must-see for fans of John Ajvide Lindqvist and existential zombie films.
Murayama Kaita, a Japanese painter, novelist and poet died in 1919 at the age of 22, leaving behind an impressive and time-defying body of work. In his most recent film, Sato Hisayasu offers a surreal, time-crossing, meta-layered essay on the artist, his originality and his legacy. Dear Kaita Ablaze brings together a young woman Azami obsessed with Murayama's painting, a young man Saku, who can hear unusual frequencies and claims to be Murayama or his spiritual imprint and a quartet of young performers with psychic abilities. They bond over Murayama’s work which they recreate in performative dance while driving to a mysterious cave called Agartha. Sato Hisayasu (The Eye's Dream, Muscle, The Bedroom), renowned for his pinku and exploration of madness and lust, returns to IFFR. Dear Kaita Ablaze is hyper-dense, obsessive and driven, effortlessly mashing surrealism with sci-fi and mysticism, layering seemingly unrelated events and encounters to bring them together in a monumental climax. – kijA
