Hands down my most favorite film I've seen this year on Mubi. Truly honest cinema. I know I say this every time I watch anything exceptional, but this here is a very special film I want you all to experience in the theater before it leaves.

Following a naive Japanese woman reporter and her crew in Uzbekistan, we get to accompany a trip in which everything never goes according to plan and the locals never seem to appreciate their presence. It tells a story of how a failed effort to produce a typical shallow travel variety show turns into a journey of self-realization and genuine human contact. A treatise on the diminishing possibility of meaningful intercultural exchange under the current stage of global capitalism, but also its precious value.

Kurosawa's meta-travel documentary piece masterfully dissects the superficiality of globalization, the culture of tourism made possible by the elimination of space through time-that flexible intercontinental mobility of air travel and the instantaneity of digital media-which should serve to bring cultures together, yet paradoxically, ultimately pulls them apart. Sitting in front of TVs and computers, we screen alien cultures in the comfort of our couch, oblivious to the unimaginable life that goes on behind the colorful scenes.

It's a profound meditation on what it means to be a traveller rather than a tourist, to be a participant rather than a spectator, to look past the shiny surface of capitalism's reductive mediatization of differences. It's an invitation to get lost and then, from those in-between places of otherness, stumble upon a way.

As Shuji Terayama would have said: throw away your maps, wander in the bazaars!

A japanese film crew in uzbekistan. on the cheap. making a travelogue. the "star" of the show, is a young japanese woman, with a lot of moxie. for reasons i could not comprehend, she keeps wandering off by herself in a totally unfamiliar country, with no language skills or smarts. anyway this seems to be a message movie. we're all the same, all we need is dialog between us to make a better world. or something like that. it didn't move me.

After a slow start, film builds to a SOUND OF MUSIC (1965) like ending. Principal actress Atsuko Maeda plays a strong women with conviction (Maeda is also a former J-pop singer and can really sing!). Some comedy and lots of suspense (mostly imaged) when Atsuko's character takes a self-guided tour by herself of some scary parts of a foreign city. This includes a run in with the local police (apparently using real police officers). Unfortunately, sound mix of Maeda and full orchestra is not great - orchestra drowns out the singer! Direction and acting (including locals) is fine. Production value is high. Subtitles are good enough. Viewed at JICC J-Film event. WILLIAM FLANIGAN