Love Life + Tulpa

Dir. Kôji Fukada. Japan/France. 2022, 124 mins. In Japanese with English subtitles. DCP. With Fumino Kimura, Kento Nagayama, Atom Sunada, Hirona Yamazaki, Misuzu Kanno. Taeko (Kimura), her husband Jiro (Nagayama), and son Keita live a seemingly blissful middle-class existence as beloved members of a sun-bathed apartment complex community. A tragic accident forces Taeko and Jiro to reckon with their unacknowledged desires and differences, leading Taeko on an emotional journey that will reunite her with her former husband, a deaf and homeless émigré from South Korea, as a way dealing with her grief. An impeccably crafted study of the distorted senses of self-worth that motivate feelings of care, and of the shared networks of shame that lurk beneath the well-maintained surface of East Asian society, Fukada’s film constitutes a sparkling revival of the emotional currents of classical Japanese melodrama. An Oscilloscope Pictures Release. U.S. premiere 

Preceded by: 
Tulpa  
Dir. Chun-Chieh Wang. 2022, 16 mins. With Kinchong Lei, Linyu Zhong. Struggling to succeed in school while his parents fight at home, Wang (Kinchong Lei) conjures a friend who offers comfort and stokes desire yet also confuses the line between imagination and reality. New York premiere 

Tickets: $15 / $11 senior and students / $9 youth (ages 3–17) / discounted for MoMI members ($7–$11). Order tickets. Please pick up tickets at the Museum’s admissions desk upon arrival. All seating is general admission. Review safety protocols before your visit.

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About the Filmmakers:

Kôji Fukada is a Japanese film director and screenwriter. After making his first feature film, The Chair, he joined the Seinendan theatrical company headed by Oriza Hirata in 2005. His film Hospitalité (2010) won the Best Picture Award in the Japanese Eyes competition of the Tokyo International Film Festival; Au revoir l’été (2013) won the grand prize and the prize of the young jury at the Three Continents Festival; Harmonium (2016) won the Prix du Jury in the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival. In 2018, Fukada was awarded Chevalier of Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France.  

Chun-Chieh Wang is a Taiwanese independent filmmaker. He directed and wrote his short film Tulpa (2022) in Chinese, which won the Tokyo International Short Film Festival. Inspired by sci-fi with philosophical depth, he focuses on internal conflicts, social issues, and Asian cultural customs by exploring the possibilities of combining moving images and literary criticism. He is currently working on a feature script, Disquiet, which discusses the psychological influence of memory. Wang also works as a colorist and contributor to a Chinese publication.