Acclaimed for his rigorous approach to character study, anchored in stillness, place and memory, Sho Miyake (2025’s Golden Leopard winner Two Seasons, Two Strangers) has been carving a unique space within Japanese cinema. It all begins with Good for Nothing (2010) and Playback (2012), two melancholic “slacker” narratives that encapsulate the liminality of growing up as well as cinema’s gift for capturing lost time.
In Miyake’s breakthrough Playback, Haji (Jun Murakami), an actor at an impasse, dreams his own death. At the suggestion of an old friend (Masaki Miura), he escapes the dreariness of Tokyo to attend a wedding in his hometown, only to wake up from a nap in his old school uniform, seemingly back in time (or perhaps simply dreaming a past life). Shot digitally and finished in luminous 35mm black-and-white film, Playback is a meticulous reflection on cinema’s ability to turn the pillars of life into memory palaces one may eventually traverse. Competing at the Locarno Film Festival in 2012, it positioned Miyake, alongside peers such as Ryusuke Hamaguchi, at the vanguard of Japan’s arthouse filmmakers.
Acclaimed for his rigorous approach to character study, anchored in stillness, place and memory, Sho Miyake (2025’s Golden Leopard winner Two Seasons, Two Strangers) has been carving a unique space within Japanese cinema. It all begins with Good for Nothing (2010) and Playback (2012), two melancholic “slacker” narratives that encapsulate the liminality of growing up as well as cinema’s gift for capturing lost time.
In Miyake’s breakthrough Playback, Haji (Jun Murakami), an actor at an impasse, dreams his own death. At the suggestion of an old friend (Masaki Miura), he escapes the dreariness of Tokyo to attend a wedding in his hometown, only to wake up from a nap in his old school uniform, seemingly back in time (or perhaps simply dreaming a past life). Shot digitally and finished in luminous 35mm black-and-white film, Playback is a meticulous reflection on cinema’s ability to turn the pillars of life into memory palaces one may eventually traverse. Competing at the Locarno Film Festival in 2012, it positioned Miyake, alongside peers such as Ryusuke Hamaguchi, at the vanguard of Japan’s arthouse filmmakers.