TWO SEASONS, TWO STRANGERS

A Screenwriter Journeys for Inspiration

Venue(s): CineSwitch Ginza
from December 19 (Fri), 2025
Language: Japanese with English subtitles
Official website: www.bitters.co.jp/tabitohibi/
Theater website: cineswitch.com/about
Trailer: https://bit.ly/3MEz5ei

Advance tickets: Check theater website.

Title: 旅と日々 (Tabi to Hibi)
Director: Sho Miyake (三宅唱)
Duration: 89 mins

Sho Miyake’s surprise Locarno Golden Leopard Award winner (marking the first Japanese win in nearly two decades) finally arrives with English subtitles. If you’re a fan of the director’s previous work (Small, Slow but Steady; All the Long Nights), you’ll certainly want to see this one, based on Yoshiharu Tsuge’s short manga stories and inflected with Miyake’s placid worldview. Although rising star Yuumi Kawai appears for a short time, it’s really Shim Eun-kyung’s (The Journalist) show, and she’s both moving and slyly humorous as a Korean screenwriter named Lee, in Japan at a midlife impasse.

In the film’s opening scenes, a teen boy (Mansaku Takada) meets a young woman (Kawai) on the beach and they exchange stories over the course of two afternoons. There’s something slightly stilted about their behavior, and we soon find out why: this is a scene from the screenwriter’s latest film, being screened for students, who then discuss it in a Q&A after the screening. Although she receives mostly positive comments, Lee protests that she “lacks talent,” and before we know it, she’s off on a train journey through some gorgeous winter scenery.

When she can’t find a room in a regular hotel, she winds up staying in the snowbound middle of nowhere at a traditional ryokan run by a taciturn innkeeper named Benzo (a hilarious Shinichi Tsutsumi). He growls a bit, and offers her neither proper heating nor decent meals. Lee takes it all in stride, and when Benzo invites her out one late night to go fishing, she readily goes along. Soon, there are police and a slow-moving race through the snow.

Unlike too many Japanese films, Two Seasons, Two Strangers is without flab, finishing up just when you’re settling in for more. This trim runtime is just one of the many reasons to head to the theater.

CineSwitch Ginza