HAZE (2005)

Japan. Direction: Shinya Tsukamoto. Production: Shinichi Kawahara, Shinya Tsukamoto / Kaijyu Theater. Screenplay: Shinya Tsukamoto. Photography: Shinya Tsukamoto. Music: Chu Ishikawa. Edition: Shinya Tsukamoto. Cast: Shinya Tsukamoto, Kahori Fujii, Takahiro Murase, Takahiro Kandaka, Masato Tsujioka. Running time: 48 min

LANGUAGE: Japanese / SUBTITLES: Basque, English

A man (Tsukamoto himself) falls into a narrow space. His body hardly fits inside. He is wounded. He cannot remember what he is doing there, nor how he got there. While starting to search for an exit in the midst of the darkness surrounding him, he attempts to remember who he is. Is he dreaming? Or is this all a complex torture plot, designed by an enemy he cannot remember? One of the most unclassifiable Japanese filmmakers from the past three decades –Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989), A Snake of June (2002), Vital (2004), Nightmare Detective (2006)– directs this suffocating middle-length film with an almost unbreathable ambiance, straddling reality and imagination, between life and death.