Comedy

A Beautiful Star

美しい星

Directed by: Yoshida Daihachi
2017 / 127 minutes / Under 15s must be accompanied by an adult

Are they just crazy or are they really cosmic?

Screened as part of JFF 2017

Osugi (Lily Franky) is a placid TV weather forecaster oblivious to his decreasing popularity and growing irrelevance. But when he’s hit by bright lights and wakes up in a field after several hours of missing time, he realises he’s a Martian emissary from the League of Solar Planets.

Rediscovering his purpose on Earth, Osugi descends into an evangelical fervour, his weather reports turn into apocalyptic rants that prophesize the impending doom that is climate change. At the same time, his son(Kazuya Kamenashi of KAT-TUN) and daughter (Ai Hashimoto, ) undergo their own extra-terrestrial awakening. Only their mother, a housewife busy with a pyramid scam, seems to be the only true Earthling among them.

Each with their own agenda, the Solar League family members take their own conflicting positions on the fate of planet Earth—until a human tragedy pulls them together.

Based loosely on a 1962 novel by Yukio Mishima, this family drama goes cosmic, with the lines blurring between reality, deception and madness. Director Daihachi Yoshida (Pale Moon, The Kirishima Thing) creates a surreal but relatable drama by playing with themes of delusion and desire, set against a backdrop of climate change and sinister politics.