Heaven Is Still Far Away

Yuzo shares his apartment with high schooler Mitsuki, with whom he hangs out between doing work as a censorship mosaic engineer for pornography. However, there’s more to the duo’s seemingly odd partnership than is immediately apparent, and when a film student reaches out to Yuzo and proposes to interview him for a documentary about her dead sister, Yuzo is prompted to reveal Mitsuki’s secret. Originally made as a reward for contributors to the crowdfunding campaign of Hamaguchi’s 2016 film Happy Hour, this tender ghost story displays the director’s penchant for investigating hidden emotions and blurring the lines between past and present.

Part of Three by Ryusuke Hamaguchi.