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. His career 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 ability to capture lost time.

Miyake's debut, Good for Nothing, set in his native Sapporo, Hokkaido, chronicles the lives of a trio of young men on the cusp of graduation. After a wave of break-ins hits the the wintry town, the boys find work at local security systems company... when not joyriding and wandering, strewn as they are between juvenile delinquency and the requirements of respectability. A remarkably youthful film, it unfolds as a decentralized character study set in a close-knit community. Captured in a spellbinding, rough-edged monochrome, it is a poignant reminiscence of youth, echoing forward in time from 1999 (1999), an experimental short Miyake shot in high school.