THE WOLVES OF THE EAST

An Old Timer Tests His Survival Instincts

Venue(s): Shinjuku Picadilly, United Cinema Aqua City Odaiba, Cineplex Satte
Date: Feb. 3 (Fri) - Check the theater sites.
Language: Japanese with English subtitles
Official website: ldhpictures.co.jp/movie/higashinoookami/
Theater website: www.smt-cinema.com/site/shinjuku/index.html
Theater website: www.unitedcinemas.jp/odaiba/index.html
Theater website: www.unitedcinemas.jp/satte/index.html
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8Eh-HjuM84&feature=youtu.be


Title: 東の狼 (Higashi no Ookami)
Director: Carlos Quintela (カルロス・M・キンテラ)
Duration: 79min

In her role as founder of the Nara International Film Festival, held biennially in her hometown, Japan’s preeminent female auteur Naomi Kawase is mentoring a new generation of filmmakers, often producing the work of young directors discovered at the festival.

One of them is Cuban Carlos M. Quintela, whose new film, The Wolves of the East, was produced under the aegis of the NARAtive project, with Kawase serving as executive producer.

Quintela’s third film, after the multi-award-winning The Swimming Pool (2011) and The Project of the Century (2015), it is an elegiac ode to the old ways, amidst the erosion of communities and belief systems, and the collapse of time-honored traditions.

The star of The Wolves of the East, legendary actor Tatsuya Fuji (In the Realm of the Senses, Bright Future, Ryuzo and the Seven Henchmen) plays Akira Nimura, a former sailor who is now a hunter in the Nara mountain village of Higashi Yoshino, famous for the wolves that disappeared 100 years ago. In their stead, the hunters have maintained the ecosystem by killing the area’s oversupply of deer.

After 30 years as the head of the Hunters’ Association, Akira has become obsessed with finding an actual wolf, and spends a hefty chunk of the group’s funds on tens of night-vision cameras that can be affixed to trees, thus providing proof that the creatures still exist.

But his fellow hunters have had enough of Akira’s individualist ways, and forcibly remove him from his position as president (in a truly heartbreaking scene). The betrayal induces him to head alone into the deep forest, on what may be his final hunt…

At a special screening of the film last October, during the Tokyo International Film Festival, Fuji discussed his experience living in the mountains around Nara for a full month during the shoot, and his approach to the role. He was convinced that “Carlos wanted to make a Cuban film, with Nara as the setting. There are things that are difficult to interpret for those who aren’t Cuban, such as the spirit of the wolf.” When he asked the director just what the wolf was supposed to mean, “Carlos said, ‘The wolf is love,’ and that confused me even more. But I felt like maybe the wolf was similar to the director, because he had gone through such a struggle to make his film.”

Shinjuku Picadilly

United Cinemas Aqua City Odaiba

Cineplex Satte