Kakera: A Piece of Our Life (カケラ Kakera)

“Kakera is an off-kilter lesbian love story… Momoko Ando conjures up a lovely sense of everyday strangeness.” – Xan Brooks, The Guardian

OPENING NIGHT FILM

Co-presented with the Eye Weekly

Haru (Hikari Mitsushima) is a meek University student with a less than ideal boyfriend who is basically using her for sex, and when he can’t get it from Haru he has no qualms about cheating on her. Haru isn’t thinking of giving up on men, but when a strange young woman named Riko (Eriko Nakamura) comes on to Haru in a cafe one afternoon she definitely doesn’t turn her down. Riko, whose day job lovingly crafting prosthetic limbs, explains that she’s not attracted to women, she’s attracted to certain people, in this case Haru. Despite Haru’s initial confusion the two embark on a relationship, but things don’t always go smoothly. There are road bumps on the way to love. For Haru it’s a sweet young man and fellow University student, Tetsu (Ryu Morioka) who honestly seems to have a crush on her. For Riko it’s Tohko (Rino Katase), a flamboyant, tattooed woman in her late 40′s who has lost a breast to cancer. It’s Riko job to craft her a new one, but the two take their professional relationship even further.

In the same way Riko acts as a crazy catalyst who shifts Haru’s perspectives on life first time director Momoko Ando creates a film that goes well beyond any kind of tired old lesbian chic. Kakera: A Piece of Our Life has become the buzz film of the past year with festival stops at London’s Raindance Film Festival and the New York Asian Film Festival and heralds an exciting and original new talent in the world of Japanese film.

Director: Momoko Ando

Producer: Sakura Momoyama, Keiko Watanabe, Kazunari Hashiguchi

Screenplay: Momoko Ando (based on a manga by Erika Sakurazawa)

Cinematography: Koichi Ishii

Editing: Junichi Masunaga

Music: James Iha

Cast: Hikari Mitsushima, Eriko Nakamura, Rino Katase, Tasuku Nagaoka, Masahiko Tsugawa, Ken Mitsuishi, Toshie Negishi, Ryu Morioka, Megumi Ohori

Released: 2009

Running time: 107 minutes

Trailer /  Official Website

Director’s Bio

Momoko Ando was born in Tokyo in 1982, the daughter of actor/ director Eiji Okuda and essayist and TV personality Kazu Ando. Her education began at London’s Slade School of Fine Art and continued at New York University where Ando studied film. She honed her filmmaking talents through working as an assistant on many of her father’s productions. Kakera: A Piece of Our Life, an adaptation of the manga Love Vibes by Erika Sakurazawa, is her feature directorial debut.