Ivan Kander

I realize asking folks on the internet to watch a 30 minute meditative grief drama centered on the fallout of the Fukushima nuclear disaster is a bit of an “ask.” It’s not exactly easy material to consume and it requires a formal commitment that is more involved than your typical binge and click online viewing.

Homesick, though, is prestige short filmmaking through and through: well-crafted and very well performed, and despite its ostensibly heavy material, sweet and emotional. The situation being depicted is post-apocalyptic and surreal: a father “spends time” with his exposed son while wearing a hazmat suit in the fallout of the nuclear site. There’s a bit of a gimmick at play here, but filmmaker Koya Kamura slowly and deliberately plays out the film’s central reveal—it’s not so much a twist as it is a useful and powerful tool to visually represent loss and grief. It’s somewhat masterful how well Kamura balances the overarching concept, which on paper, could have easily been something saccharine. It really goes to show you that filmmaking, at its core, isn’t solely dependent on the concept itself, but rather, the execution of it.

“I wanted to reconnect with my father’s heritage. Working in Japan, in Japanese” – Koya Kamura on the film’s production

The set-up lends itself well to the surreal image of our protagonist, Murai, decked out in hazmat suit like some sort of Last of Us-esque NPC while his son meanders about in a baseball jersey and shorts. This uncanny sensibility is bolstered by the setting: the overgrown and abandoned area surrounding the nuclear reactor, rusting ships and decaying buildings. It’s the detritus of a landscape poisoned by human activity, haunted by the ghosts of those who were unable to escape. There’s a chilling beauty to it all that Kamura expertly frames via the help of superb cinematography from Kanamé Onoyama.

But, the power of the imagery would be all for naught if the human stuff didn’t work. I like that Kamura balances out the immeasurable sadness of the death of a child with the burgeoning connection Murai forms with a female character—it expresses the astounding human capacity to be both devastated by grief while simultaneously open to forming new bonds: life ends, yes, but as is symbolically represented by the fecund overgrowth subsuming an abandoned civilization, it also somehow manages to move on.

Homesick had an impressive festival run before finally premiering online, screening at 60 festivals and scooping up 40 prizes in the process.