Dir: Miki Tanaka | Cast: Yui Okamoto, Hayato Kurihara. | Drama 2026
In a world increasingly accustomed to the public declaration and definition of sexual identity, Silver Express, a Japanese feature making its world premiere in the competition at the 2026 Busan International Film Festival, takes a refreshingly different route.
Japanese director Miki Tanaka’s first feature centres on Chieri, a young woman who has never experienced sexual attraction and finds herself increasingly alienated by a society in which romance seems an essential prerequisite for happiness. When she encounters Shoya, a man who shares her lack of romantic feeling, she discovers the comfort of being understood. But their apparent affinity conceals a fundamental difference: he experiences physical desire, while she does not.
What makes the film distinctive is its refusal to turn asexuality into a sensational issue or a condition requiring explanation. Instead, Tanaka explores the subtler territory between intimacy and desire, asking whether two people can find companionship without being expected to conform to conventional definitions of love. At a time when sexuality is often discussed in emphatic, carefully labelled terms, there is something appealingly radical about a film that allows its protagonist simply to be herself.
The delicacy of the approach is its greatest strength. Rather than labouring its message through speeches or dramatic confrontations, the film allows Chieri’s isolation to emerge through everyday social encounters, uncomfortable silences and the small humiliations of being different. Her difficulty is not necessarily that she lacks something, but that the world continually reminds her of what it assumes she ought to want. This distinction gives the film an emotional intelligence that extends well beyond its particular subject.
Is it believable? Largely, yes. Chieri’s experience feels credible precisely because the film does not attempt to make her representative of every asexual person. Her need for understanding, her loneliness and her relief at discovering someone with whom she can communicate are recognisably human. The relationship with Shoya also introduces an important complication: sharing one aspect of identity does not automatically make two people compatible. Their differences are not easily resolved, and the film is more interesting for acknowledging this than it would have been with a simpler, more reassuring conclusion.
Visually, Silver Express favours atmosphere and observation over ostentation. The framing and shifts in proximity help convey Chieri’s changing relationship with the people around her, creating an understated visual language for emotions that she struggles to articulate. There is an appealing restraint to the filmmaking, which trusts the audience to notice what remains unspoken.
Does it keep us entertained? This is not a film that relies on plot twists, comic incident or conventional romantic fulfilment. Its pleasures are quieter: the gradual development of character, the tension between companionship and expectation, and the curiosity generated by a relationship that refuses to follow familiar rules. Some may find its measured pace and emotional reserve frustrating, and its subtlety occasionally risks becoming too subdued. But for those willing to meet it on its own terms, there is considerable satisfaction in its observations.
Silver Express is ultimately less a film about the absence of sex than about the many forms human connection can take. Its originality lies not simply in putting an asexual woman at the centre of the story, but in resisting the temptation to make her identity a curiosity. Gentle, visually assured and quietly thought-provoking, it invites us to reconsider how much of our understanding of love is genuinely personal, and how much is imposed upon us by everyone else.
WORLD PREMIERE AT BUSAN FILM FESTIVAL 2026