Film screening with an introduction and post-film Q&A with director Ryusuke Hamaguchi, moderated by Markus Nornes (Professor of Asian Cinema) and Kazuhiro Soda (Toyota Professor in Residence, Filmmaker)

Free & Open to the Public

Light refreshments will be served

Happy Hour ハッピー・アワー
2015, 317 minutes (two intermissions)
Directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi 監督 濱口竜介
Presented in Japanese with English subtitles

The Center for Japanese Studies is proud to present a visit by Japan's most important young director and the most important Japanese film of 2015.

"Four thirtysomething female friends in the misty seaside city of Kobe navigate the unsteady currents of their work, domestic, and romantic lives. They seek solace in one another’s company, but a sudden revelation creates a rift and rouses each woman to take stock. Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s wise, precisely observed, compulsively watchable drama of friendship and midlife awakening runs over five hours, yet the leisurely duration is not an indulgence but a careful strategy -- to show what other films leave out, to create a space for everyday moments that is nonetheless charged with possibility, and to yield an emotional density rarely available to a feature-length movie. Developed through workshops with a cast of mostly newcomers (the extraordinary lead quartet shared the Best Actress award at the Locarno Film Festival), and filled with absorbing sequences that flow almost in real time, Happy Hour has a novelistic depth and texture. But it’s also the kind of immersive, intensely moving experience that remains unique to cinema” (New Directors/New Films 2016 screening notes).