Before his death in 1990, novelist Sato Yasushi wrote 18 short stories for an incomplete anthology. Those stories were eventually published as the novel Kaitanshi Jokei. The ambitious collection was a sprawling work about the lives of people living in a fictional seaside town in northern Japan (modeled after Sato's home city of Hakodate). Now, director Kumikiri Kazuyoshi (Freesia) brings five of those stories to life in the critically acclaimed drama Sketches of Kaitan City. Set around one New Year's Eve, Sketches of Kaitan City is a bleak and powerful examination of a city where hope is in short supply, but its people nevertheless carry on.
Despite the somber subject matter, the film was a passion project for executive producer Sugiwara Kazuhiko, who managed to gather Hakodate residents to help bring the film to the big screen. The efforts of a committee made up of 20 Hakodate locals that followed even helped raise 12 million yen for the making of the film, making Sketches of Kaitan City a stellar example of community filmmaking.
The seaside city of Kaitan is not a happy place – the shipyard is downsizing due to poor economic conditions, and the city's residents are about to face another harsh northern winter. Sketches of Kaitan City offers five of the many stories concurrently happening in this city - A shipyard worker (Takehara Pistol) who has lost his job and can't afford to take care of his younger sister (Tanimura Mitsuki), an old woman (Nakazato Aki) who refuses to give up her home for redevelopment facing forced eviction, a planetarium owner (Kobayashi Kaoru) whose relationship with his family is quickly deteriorating, a young owner of a gas cylinder company (Kase Ryo) with plenty to be frustrated about, and a streetcar driver (Nishibori Shigeki) whose only son (Miura Masaki) refuses to visit him on a trip home from Tokyo. These characters may not seem like they have much to celebrate about on this New Year's Eve, but they each discover their own way to continue their lives. |