I Am What I Am
Original title: Sobakasu
Sun
17
Sun 17 Nov 5:30 PM
Sold Out
Cinema Nova - Cinema 9
Wheelchair
Allocated Seating
Unclassified 15+
104 Mins | Japan November
MELBOURNE PREMIERE
In Shinya Tamada’s quietly touching new feature film, call-centre employee and former cellist Kasumi (Tôko Miura, star of Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car) struggles to fit in with her peers and the norms of mainstream Japanese societal expectations, as she grapples with her asexual identity. Her mother, concerned by Kasumi’s lack of interest in marriage, takes her to a matchmaking service which sets off a journey of self-actualisation. This gentle film deals not only with culturally specific issues of queer identity but is also universal in its themes of belonging and alienation, in focusing on that section of the LGBTQIA+ community least represented on film, and perhaps least understood, to date.
November