Black san serif logo spelling out KANI with elongated circular eyes signifying crab eyes. Wavy contours are reminicent of the ocean. Kani Releasing logo designed by Leo Mak.

KANI001

Tadashi Nagayama

Being Natural

Japan

2018

96
minutes

Synopsis

Takashi Uno (Yohta Kawase, Rubber's Lover) wants little more from life than to play the bongo under the starlight. When his uncle passes, his freshly divorced cousin inherits their traditional country home and tasks the shy slacker with caring for it. Together with the town’s underdog grocer Sho, the three revert to a joyful childhood dynamic. Leisurely BBQ (the cheapest beef!) and cup noodles, it’s all fun and games until a family from Tokyo led by an unhinged patriarch (screen veteran Kanji Tsuda, Ju-On: The Grudge) and his enigmatic wife (Natsuki Mieda) manifest their desire to open a countryside café at all costs.

Tadashi Nagayama – a protégé of the Yubari International Fantastic Film Festival since his 2017 Grand Prix-winning debut Journey of the Tortoise – baffles audience expectations at every turn with this gentle, mellow yet thoroughly eccentric pastoral comedy about the right to do nothing, Japan’s growing urban-rural divide and the country’s ongoing nuclear anxieties.

Out Fishing (2021, 19 mins), a new featurette with director Tadashi Nagayama, writer Yuriko Suzuki and actor Yohta Kawase
• Making of Being Natural: Public Talk at K's Cinema (2019, 19 mins)
• Featurette with Director, SFX and VFX Team
• Japanese theatrical trailer
• English and Japanese SDH subtitles
• Region Free Blu-ray
• New writing by Mathieu Li-Goyette

New cover art by Pearl Chan and Ariel Esteban Cayer

Team

Contact

Inquiries: info@kani-releasing.com
Theatrical Bookings: theatrical@kani-releasing.com
Press: press@kani-releasing.com

Founded by Ariel Esteban Cayer & Pearl Chan
Theatrical Booking: Aaron Hunt
Logo Design: Leo Mak
Ident Theme: The Great Octopus
Distribution: OCN Distribution