VILLAGE OF DREAMS

VILLAGE OF DREAMS is an evocation of a Japan that is now forever lost, a remarkable film that carries the viewer back to one idyllic summer in 1948. Sons of the local schoolteacher, Seizo and his twin Yukihiko live together in a rustic community in the Kochi countryside. They love to draw but have a reputation as pranksters and troublemakers, which they live up to in a series of escapades. Some of these are grounded in reality, others rooted in fantasy, mysticism, and the imagination that will make this pair great illustrators when they grow up, if they ever do. And, yes, they did; that's the real-life Seizo and Yukihiko Tashima in the prologue and epilogue. In between lies a bucolic, serene, and nostalgic narrative, casting a spell of innocence and the image of boyhood as a never-ending sunlit season. Director Higashi Yoichi wrote that he intends VILLAGE OF DREAMS as a telling contrast to the faceless “digital nation” that Japan has become today, but anyone, from any culture, who has ever been young can relate. In Japanese with English subtitles.- Charles Cassady