MIKE YOKOHAMA: A FOREST WITH NO NAME

Hardboiled, swashbuckling private eye Maiku “Mike” Hama gets a strange new assignment in this U.S. premiere. The nattily-dressed Japanese gumshoe owes his violent loan shark so much yen he even has to steal back his own repo'ed car to take the case that may make or break him. A rich businessman wants to marry off his resistant daughter to a wealthy family, but she has fled to a cult-like, self-improvement clinic, in isolation near the forest. Mike's assignment is to enter the group's sequestered compound pretending to be a seeker and bring the prodigal daughter back. But the cult's ever-smiling sensei, an eerie woman doctor, who gives her disciples numbers instead of names, seems to know exactly what to say to a person to drive him or her over the edge. She unhinges one poor woman, Number 29, by saying that “freedom is an illness.” Full of insouciant energy and dressed in his best urban chic, Mike is an unlikely “convert” whose very presence disturbs everyone. And stealing the daughter away proves to be a much harder task than he thought. After a while, the cult leader sends Mike Hama-san into the forest to look for a very special tree, a search that becomes an obsession. Spiked with humor and a certain, enigmatic dread, MIKE YOKOHAMA: A FOREST WITH NO NAME kicks off a series starring the stylish, sexy Mike, whose nourish escapades in modern Nippon's disjointed and spiritually desolate terrain will showcase the talents of different young Japanese directors in forthcoming installments. (In Japanese with English subtitles)