Tokyo Night Sky Is Always the Densest Shade of Blue (2017)

Newcomer Shizuka Ishibashi throws herself into the role of Mika, a nurse by day, a 'girlie bar' hostess by night, subject to feelings of anxiety and isolation, and unable to reach through a hard outer shell that stops her from expressing tenderness to anyone else. Sosuke Ikematsu, one of Japan's most important young actors, stars as Shinji, who struggles as a day-hire construction worker with a sense of impending doom, but who still tries to find the source of an unnamable hope he feels inside. The setting is Tokyo in 2017, where empty words, a sense of doom, and feelings of isolation co-exist with hope, trust, and love. In the sense of real life conjured up in these two people is a new kind of film: the densest kind of love story.—Hong Kong International Film & TV Market