Sono Shion
dir. Sion Sono
Japan 2020, 148’
Subtitles: Polish
Screenings
06.10.2023, 19:00
Cinema Muranów
Well-known director Tadashi Kobayashi announces an open audition for his new film. No experience necessary, so many of the hopefuls are amateurs with stars in their eyes.
The title is a reference to the old red postbox on Escher Street into which all the applications are posted. This old-fashioned touch is Kobayashi’s wish, expressed in the advertisement. The plot follows the rivalry that plays out between the young applicants.
Sono adopts the convention of a warm, ostentatiously anachronistic tragicomedy to comment on his many years’ work in the business of discovering new talents, engaging them, and so bringing new faces into the film industry. Red Post on Escher Street is also a declaration of love for the cinema, and an expression of fascination with the audition process and the spontaneous interactions that occur from the casting, through the rehearsal phase, and finally on the set.
Prizes and festivals
2020 Montréal Festival of New Cinema – Temps Ø People's Choice Award: Sion Sono
Sion Sono
A deserted street. Classical music. A girl stands poised with a clapperboard. The tension rises. The director gives an instruction off camera, the clapperboard falls shut, and the street gradually fills with apparently random, colourfully dressed passers-by. Within a minute all the characters in this highly original film pass before our eyes.
Red Post on Escher Street was the outcome of a series of acting workshops run by Sono for amateurs. Before long, the director realized they were unsatisfying, and invited his adepts to work with him on a real production. It thus has a lot in common with diploma projects, and also invites associations with his earlier performative work in the public space. And in this way, decades on, he again demonstrates his skill at managing a large group of people and his passion for creation.
Production team
director: Sion Sono
screenplay: Sion Sono
camera: Suzuki Masaya
editor: Sion Sono
cast: Nawata Canon, Kohira Matsuri, Matsumoto Hirona, Kobayashi Tadashi, Fujimaru Sen
producer: Hiroyuki Ogasawara
distributor: Hikoki Films International, AMG Entertainment
language: Japanese
colour/ BW: colour
