Part of the 2022 season: What Lies Beneath

First Love

ファーストラヴ

Director TSUTSUMI Yukihiko

Cast KITAGAWA Keiko, NAKAMURA Tomoya, YOSHINE Kyoko

UK Premiere, 2021, 119 min, English Subtitles

Kanna (YOSHINE Kyoko) is a university student who, by all appearances, was on the fast track to achieving her dream of becoming a TV announcer. That is, until the day she stabs her father to death without any apparent motive. Assigned to write a book on the crime and the mental state of the perpetrator, clinical psychologist, Yuki (KITAGAWA Keiko), begins a series of face-to-face sessions with Kanna in prison. As Yuki attempts to delve into the motivations for the murder and begins to be drawn into Kanna’s testimony as well as her apparent emotional state, the process in turn causes repressed memories of her own to rise to the surface which she must now confront.

This edge-of-your-seat psychological thriller, adapted from a novel by the Naoki Prize-winning author SHIMAMOTO Rio (who also wrote Shape of Red), will keep you holding your breath until the very last second. Directed by TSUTSUMI Yukihiko (Initiation Love), it brilliantly captures the psychology of women who suffer from their pasts in silence.

©2021 “First Love” Film Partners

Past screenings