Japan, 2021, 97′
by Hoya Seiyo
K City, a coastal Japanese city, is under the influence of Void Dharma, a freestyle rapper who ignores the Japanese constitution and preaches for region rejuvenation and independent state. A spy, Watanabe, is sent to K-city on a mission to assassinate Void Dharma. Does the legendary Dharma-Ray, which is harmless to all good beings but destroys all the bad and evil ones, really exist? This is the story of a manga created by a small boy, Hosuke. He and his friends, a genius pianist Kei and his followers, enter a dangerous game of death. Alien Artist is an apocalyptic fantasy with an imaginary city and characters, through the story of artists who might be a destroyer, prophet or savior. 23-year-old director, Hoya Seiyo, creates a unique world, with parallel universes or a tale of tales with only 40,000 dollars. He tells this story by laying a modern paradigm, such as region rejuvenation and political correctness, on top of the image of the Japanese defeat with atomic bombs, weaving music, drawing and animation freely with a rhythmical flow, like freestyle rap. (Ellen Y. D. KIM)
Hoya Seiyo
Born November 2, 1999 in Ena City, Gifu Prefecture. He had been aspiring to be a painter since he was a child, but when he was in junior high school, his father told him that he was a good film director, and he became interested in filmmaking. He was greatly influenced by SOLARIS (1972), directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, which he rented and watched at a video rental store while shooting. In 2018, he entered the Faculty of Letters at Kyoto University and majored in religious philosophy. He belongs to the Kyoto University Cinema Study Group. In the same year, he produced the science fiction novella IZUMI (2018), where a young man meets a girl who disappeared 50 years ago on the stage of Kamiyahagi Wind Power Plant. His feature film ALIEN ARTIST (2021) was selected at BIFAN.