Dir/Wri: Sho Miyake | Japan Drama 2025 89′
Time and memory are the themes of this artful and delicately nuanced drama that explores the human need for meaningful connection and its positive impact on a young Japanese scriptwriter.
Directed by Sho Miyake and based on a manga by Yoshiharu Tsuge, the first 45 minutes of Two Seasons, Two Strangers see a writer called Li reflecting on her life with thoughts spilling out onto a blank page. This strangely compelling and ingenious ‘film within a film’ that then transports us to a windswept seaside resort where her isolated character Nagisa (Yumi Kawai) strikes up a tentative conversation with a solitary young man called Natsuo (Mansaku Takada).
As the two exchange awkward words and shy glances on a precarious cliffside their conversation deepens into an existential discussion, and as night falls they decide to meet again the following day.
Miyake then cuts back to writer Li (a thoughtful Shim Eun-kyung) who is now taking part in a Q&A of the screened film which appears to have attracted negative reactions from some viewers, provoking the jaded writer to embark on an escapist trip to a snowbound city in the mountains,
Here the wintery solitude strengthens Li’s resolve and when she meets another solitary soul in the shape of innkeeper Benzo (Shinichi Tsutsumi) she takes up the invitation to stay in a wooden cabin where his refreshing mindset further encourages Li to start writing the next chapter of her career.
Finding solace in the gentle rhythms of its lush location, Two Seasons, Two Strangers (Tabi to Hibi) is another exquisitely captured perceptive work from Japan’s Shô Miyake and won the Golden Leopard at this year’s Locarno Film Festival. @Meredith Taylor
LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL 2025 | GOLDEN LEOPARD WINNER 2025