The editor’s note: This review was originally published in 2024 Kanes Film Festival. Film movement releases “My Sunshine” in theaters on Friday 19 September 2025.
As lovely and leaning as hearing Claude Debussy’s “Clair de Lune” over a cracked turntable on a snow -stained day, Japanese filmmaker Hiroshi OkuyamaS Second feature “My Sunshine” is a moving drama about coming in age about children who are facing up to adulthood.
This gently composed story of a skating coach on the island of Hokkaido, and his two young students, has darker dynamics under the sleeve than the emotionally generous time-to-music-growing story that is on its surface. It is told in furtive look and silent pacts against a frost-lapped background, the end of winter soon comes, when two young people form a binding on the ice hall that complicates their instructor’s privacy. Japan would be wise to submit “My Sunshine”, the second feature of “Jesus” director Okuyama, for Best international feature Oscar. Both glass-half and glass half-bumped corners of the audience will reason with Okuyama’s discreet stories as this triad becomes more difficult as the film moves.
At Hokkaido, a world far from Japan’s movement, the young boy Takuya (Keitatsu Koshiyama) suffers nervousness in the class and a bar of speech, despite an under -eyed curiosity for the world when he is transfixed by the flakes falling from a new winter. Just as many of us were forced by our parents or by social pressure to be involved in sports during the class school, he is an unpleasant member of the hockey team. There, on the ice, during another game awaken, he awakened Sakura (Kiara Takanashi), an elegant peer piruetting on the track. She is a figure skater, a leisure activity that apparently more preferred over hockey by Takuya, who seems to be significantly boxed by participating in yet another boy sport. Okuyama’s film does not spare the consequences of Takuya that longs to be part of a sport that is more traditionally female dominated, and which extends to the story of Sakura’s coach, Arakawa (Sôsuke Ikematsu).
He is a walking skier at once who has abandoned his dreams of your days to now train children at this special Hokkaido school. When he does not teach, Arakawa is running the resurfacer cunningly before going home to his live (and obviously long-lasting) boyfriend. As “My Sunshine” develops and the seasons begin to change, Arakawa’s home relationship becomes increasingly strained by the possible binding he forms with Takuya, which he takes under his wing, and Sakura, which Takuya idolizes. Sakura, who goes home from school with her mother, discovers Arakawa with her partner in her car and takes the examination of the situation.
The fact that Arakawa eventually lends Takuya his old skates indicates that he sees part of his old self in this younger boy and aroused tensions at home that was probably already there to begin with. Trio’s friendship, as they prepare for an upcoming competition and learn each other’s rhythms over rollers and skates on the ice, play at a mildly old pace, set to oldies like Zombie’s coverage of Little Anthony & the Imperials “” goes out of my head. “Everyone really goes out of their heads here as jealousy in which interrupts all their home life.
What does Sakura think when she sees Arakawa get into a car with her boyfriend? Okuyama does not tell us in any explicit terms, although it is obvious that she is being challenged by this confrontation with adults’ private lives. Even when Sakura and Takuya develop an innocent friendship, it slowly begins to crawl when each of their instructor infects all their lives.
Okuyama based this lovely and tenderly realized function on its own experiences as an elementary school. Even though the closer you look, the darker “my sunshine” starts to become, when Arakawa’s privacy falls apart despite what is an obviously long-term intimate relationship, he and his boyfriend share a cigarette on their balcony or discuss what is left of their love in bed. Okuyama, who worked as its own cinematographer, paints “My Sunshine” as a complaining story of ambitions dashed and an overly clarity formed in a boxed image relationship. The filmmaker creates a tactile universe of nostalgia and regret, heavier on suggestions than explanation.
The director is obviously gifted with child actors, as both Koshiyama and Takanashi have only a few points to their name, but manage to convey the year’s value to look at life beyond a glass box here. Takuya, Sakura and Arakawa are strangers drawn to each other for inexplicable reasons. But everyone who has suffered pangs from the class school, and wants to be someone other than you are, will relate to their emotional arches. Snow melts and ice, but the formative memories of the youth stay with you.
Rating: A-
“My Sunshine” premiered at the Film Festival 2024. Film movement opens The film in Select Us Theater Friday 19 September 2025.
