At Kinosaki

Japan, 2022, 30′

by Shingo Ota

As coronavirus infections continue to spread in Europe, Nui, a French actress loses her male co-star to COVID-19. Just a few days earlier, she was kissing him on stage. Why did Nui survive? Unable to find an answer to these recurring questions, Nui one day loses her voice and decides to return to Japan for the first time in five years and goes to the Kinosaki Onsen for treatment. Her friends died by chance, and she survived by chance. Unable to affirm her own life, she meets Takogawa, the Insect Energy Research Institute’s director.

Shingo Ota

Film director and actor. Born in 1985, in Nagano Prefecture. Majored in philosophy and narrative theory at university. Interested in filmmaking as a device to remember and record alternative narratives that fall out of the larger narrative of history. His first film, GRADUATION, won the Excellence Award and Audience Award at Image Forum Festival 2010. Her first feature-length documentary film, THE END OF THE SPECIAL TIME WE WERE ALLOWED, was released at the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival 2013 and in twelve countries globally. Since then, he has worked on edgy films, including LIBERATION ZONE,IMAGINATION, and SUNRISE VIBRATIONS. In 2021, he directed the WOWOW series, FOOD TRUCKER MINEGISHI MINAMI. Ota is also an actor, and his recent credits include UNFULFILLED GHOST AND MONSTER (produced by KAAT Kanagawa Arts Theatre, written and directed by Toshiki Okada), the drama GIVING DREAMS (WOWOW), and TOKYO WEIRD LIQUOR (TV Tokyo). Their latest film was AT KINOSAKI (2022).