ULYSSES

Drifting Through Memory, Place and Time

Venue(s): Pole-Pole Higashi Nakano
From July 21 (Mon), 2025, every Monday. Other days are with Japanese subtitles version.
Language: Russian, Spanish, Basque, English, Japanese
Official website: ulyssesfilm.studio.site/
Theater website: pole2.co.jp/
Theater website: pole2.co.jp/address
Theater website: pole2.co.jp/coming/680894bbdb43ec4733d5ace9
Trailer: https://youtu.be/Xzr3a4t-xzM?feature=shared
Tariff: General: ￥1,900, University students: ￥1,200, Senior: ￥1,200, Handicapped/Students (Junior-high/High school): ￥1,000, Students (Elementary school): ￥700
Talk event: There are many talk events. Please check the theater website.

Title: ユリシーズ (Ulysses)
Director: Hikaru Uwagawa (宇和川輝)
Duration: 73 min

After traveling for nearly a year on the international film circuit, Hikaru Uwagawa’s debut feature, Ulysses, will be screened in Tokyo, several chances for audiences to catch the English-subtitled version. Uwagawa is the first Japanese filmmaker to graduate from the Elias Querejeta Zine Eskola film school in San Sebastián, Spain, and his debut has already impressed audiences at the FID Marseille Film Festival, San Sebastián Film Festival, Tokyo FILMeX, and Jeonju Film Festival.

Inspired not by plot but by the spirit of Homer’s Odyssey and James Joyce’s Ulysses, the contemplative work weaves together three distinct stories across time and place. In Madrid, a Russian woman, Alevtina, raises her son while waiting for her partner’s return. In the Basque seaside town of San Sebastián, Enaitz—a young local woman—shares her world with Izumi, a reserved Japanese traveler. And in Okayama, Japan, Kazuko and her grandson Hikaru prepare to welcome ancestral spirits during Obon.

Each story, quiet and observational, touches on themes of absence and connection, as well as identity. Uwagawa, who also served as cinematographer and editor, has called the film “a kind of personal archive”—a meditation on why we create, and how film becomes a vessel for memory. Using long takes, natural light, and sparse dialogue, Ulysses invites the viewer to drift between both physical and emotional terrains.

Pole-Pole Higashi Nakano