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Back to list Fires on the Plain (aka The War Movie Project)

Director’s Profile

Born in Tokyo in 1960. He got interested in images on screen after he borrowed a super 8mm camera from his father when he was14 years old. His first long feature, "Tetsuo, the Iron Man" (1989) won the best prize at Rome Fantastic Film Festival and this film made him known as a filmmaker with his own style, bringing him the status of a ′cult film′ director internationally. He has continued to make films with his original vision, receiving many rave reviews and prizes. Besides being a film director, he is also an ardent performer and received some of major awards in Japan including the Best Supporting Actor award in 2003. In 1997, he served as a jury member at Venice International Film Festival, where he received the Special Jury Prize for "A Snake of June" five years later.

Synopsis

WWII, the Philippines.
The impoverished Japanese army has taken catastrophic damage from the U.S. military and cannot manage to feed themselves. Private First Class Tamura, who suffers from tuberculosis, is deserted from his unit and the medics and aimlessly wanders the land to his death. Amid the wonder of nature, his flesh and bone becomes conscious of this own demise. He encounters some fellow soldiers hanging around the front of the hospital but that night a bomb is dropped on the hospital turning it into a pandemonium of two of Buddhism’s hells. Once again, he gads among Mother Nature’s beauty with no destination home other than death knocking at his door.

He finds a vegetable garden near the ocean, Tamura, whose life which has been extended, spies a church in the distance and heads for it as if he has been drawn in by a higher power. There he finds vast quantities of corpses.

He slides into the church beating off stray dogs that attack him. During the golden hour of sunset, he encounters a local who causes a commotion. He draws and fires his gun at the screaming woman. Stuffing some salt from the church into his bag, he flees the scene. A feeling of nausea from killing the woman overtakes him and he sinks his gun in the flowing street.

Three Japanese soldiers are laying waste to the vegetable garden when he returns. They report to Tamura that all Japanese soldiers will be gathering in Parampon. For the first time, there is a possibility of returning home alive. Straggling Japanese soldiers aiming for Parampon eventually become a group. The number of the dead increases as they are attacked by the enemy and face starvation. A large platoon of U.S. soldiers stand in their way along the national highway. They must cross, or they will never reach their destination. Night falls as one group silently slip across the road, but a fierce attack from the U.S. military does destructive damage on the troops. Their state of minds shifts. The hunger in their empty stomachs reaches a break point. They wander about the forest like ghosts.

Before long, the men regard each other as food. The desire to eat exceeds the realm of normality as the men revert to their animal instincts. Meat from the solders he met at the vegetable farm is thrust into his mouth. One solider named Nagamatsu says, “It is monkey meat.” However, it is the meat of their fellow solders. Nagamatsu kills a fellow soldier and puts the meat in his mouth in front of Tamura. Tamura feels the rage in his body, takes Nagamatsu’s gun and points it at him. Blood drips from his mouth as Nagamatsu laughs at him.

Six years later, Tamura is in a mental hospital. The custom of changing of apologizing to all the supplied foods started. This is where the habit of apologizing to every piece of good given him begins. In this place of the serene silence, Tamura sits looking at what he saw in the war: the signal flares of the enemy burn without making a sound.

Achievements

2014 Busan International Film Festival
2014 Venice Film Festival ? In Competition
2014 Toronto International Film Festival
2014 Abu Dhabi Film Festival
2014 Montreal International Film Festival
2015 Goteborg Film Festival
2015 International Film Festival Rotterdam
2015 Hong Kong International Film Festival
2015 Glasgow Film Festival
2015 Osaka Asian Film Festival
2015 Offscreen Film Festival
2015 CPH: PIX
2015 Riviera Maya Film Festival
2015 Taipei Film Festival
2015 Sarajevo Film Festival
2015 Raindance Film Festival
2015 Tokyo International Film Festival

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