Two Seasons, Two Strangers (2025)

Based on two manga by Yoshiharu Tsuge, who rose to underground celebrity thanks to his surrealist tales published in the pages of the bastion of Japanese avant-garde cartooning, Garo, Miyake’s bifurcated live-action feature observes (and draws parallels and contrasts from) a summertime meet-cute between Nagisa and Natsuo (Yuumi Kawai and Mansaku Takada) and a snowbound winter encounter between screenwriter Li and innkeeper Ben-zō (Shim Eun-kyung and Shinichi Tsutsumi).

Winner of the Golden Leopard at last year’s Locarno Film Festival and hailed “a true masterpiece” by Shiguéhiko Hasumi, Japan’s greatest living film critic, Two Seasons, Two Strangers is at one and the same time as simple as its straightforward title suggests and immensely, exhilaratingly complex.