Synopsis
A young Japanese woman named Yoko finds her cautious and insular nature tested when she travels to Uzbekistan to shoot the latest episode of her travel variety show.
To the Ends of the Earth
Cast
Director
Producers
Writer
Editor
Cinematography
Assistant Director
Executive Producers
Hiroshi Yamamoto Kazuhiro Ohta Tatsuya Yoshino Eiko Mizuno Gray Toshiaki Sakamoto Nobuo Miyazaki Furkat Zokirov
Production Design
Composer
Sound
Costume Design
Studios
Countries
Primary Language
Spoken Languages
Alternative Titles
Tabi no Owari, Sekai no Hajimari, O Fim da Viagem, O Começo de Tudo, 在世界盡頭開始旅行, たびのおわりせかいのはじまり
Genre
Releases by Date
Premiere
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Switzerland
Locarno Film Festival
10 Sep 2019
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Canada
Toronto International Film Festival
03 Oct 2019
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UK
BFI London Film Festival
05 Oct 2019
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South Korea
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USA
22 Aug 2020
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Chile
Santiago International Film Festival
Theatrical
14 Jun 2019
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Japan
12 Sep 2019
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Brazil12
23 Oct 2019
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France
Releases by Country
Brazil
12 Sep 2019
- Theatrical12
Canada
10 Sep 2019
- Premiere Toronto International Film Festival
Chile
22 Aug 2020
- Premiere Santiago International Film Festival
France
23 Oct 2019
- Theatrical
Japan
14 Jun 2019
- Theatrical
South Korea
05 Oct 2019
- Premiere Busan International Film Festival
Switzerland
17 Aug 2019
- Premiere Locarno Film Festival
UK
03 Oct 2019
- Premiere BFI London Film Festival
USA
05 Oct 2019
- Premiere New York Film Festival
Popular reviews
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I adore those Kiyoshi Kurosawa movies that despite not being proper genre films draw on his horror background for their aesthetic strategies. To the Ends of the Earth is about, like most horror movies to some extant, the unknown and everything about it is about how Maeda negotiates with a world outside her own. It starts a standard sense of alienation and director and actress combine to push it in so many directions. To the Ends of the Earth has a lot in common with Kurosawa and Maeda first film in a foreign land, The Seventh Code, but that film was more overt in how it was using fiction to modulate her relationship to that strange space. The entire sequence that goes from the chase to the phone call is as good as the best stuff Kurosawa has ever done and everything else is equally compelling. The earth trembles here.
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Kiyoshi Kurosawa's utilization of space permeates his works so effectively that he is naturally credited to that of horror, the negative space housing that which is distinctly not there yet there simultaneously drawing on our most powerful fears of the unknown while shattering our perceptions: what if it, whatever 'it' is, was there all along?
In transferring this from works of genre to those of drama not only does he carry along that sense of unease but amplifies it in our understanding that the 'real world' cannot have ghosts... yet, that feeling of unease still pervades. So what is actually there? To the Ends of the Earth then takes what he's done and literalizes its geography by manifesting this fear…
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Perhaps slight to some - and perhaps that is dependant on how much you find yourself relating to the protagonist, Yoko - it's nevertheless undeniable to me that this is basically a total, genre-shapeshifting masterclass in modern narrative direction, perhaps surprising to some given K. Kurosawa's reputation as a great classicalist. That hasn't really changed here, but what's most impressive is that the film is a series of "non-events" - virtually nothing actually "happens" in this movie. In the meantime, Kurosawa takes all the techniques he's mastered in his genre work and applies them to everyday anxieties, and it's this mastery of technique which brings me to one of the things I admire most about his films - you're never…
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Kiyoshi Kurosawa's To the Ends of the Earth isn't a horror film but it feels like one. It's about a woman in an unsafe place, stuck in a country she doesn't understand. There's a creeping sense of being unwanted, as if being in a crowd is the loneliest thing ever. The atmosphere of To the Ends of the Earth is therefore oppressive.
What To the Ends of the Earth manages to do so well is undermine our own perceptions. It is openly about reality TV and the fact that it's all a presentation. The way the cinematography alternates between being televisual and cinematic also emphasises this. The lead character is also a performer - singing, presenting, masking herself. Yet despite…
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Okku, the free goat, not eaten by wild dogs at last. The beauty and dangers of the sea, the myth of the sky, the emotions of a song that leaves the theater and arrives at the mountains. God brings together those who love each other.
There is a scene in Sang-soo’s ‘In Another Country’ where Huppert talks to a goat using his language. They don’t really speak the same language, but they talked to each other either way. Freedom lies beyond denotation.
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Apesar deste novo filme de Kiyoshi Kurosawa não possuir um tom sobrenatural explícito, fica evidente que, ao longo história, existe uma mística implícita na trajetória da protagonista.
Na medida em que Yoko, a personagem de Atsuko Maeda, vai passando por diversas provações ao longo da sua viagem no Uzbequistão, na medida em que ela vai absorvendo um sofrimento emocional durante esse trajeto, ela também passa a construir uma nova relação intuitiva com o espaço ao seu redor.
Existe uma jornada mística bastante clara nesse sentido. Uma jornada que começa com um sofrimento pontuado por diferentes situações de incômodo durante o seu trabalho como jornalista, passa por uma literal perseguição por agentes da lei e culmina em sutis novos estados de…
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We are all connected by something which goes deeper than language or nationality. Clichéd as it may be, the oneness we’re all a part of is real, and beautiful, and even scary at times, but it is perhaps the most essential characteristic of our collective existence.
And it goes beyond just us humans—we are as connected with animals and our environment as we are with one another, and while it might take some time, patience and understanding, it is of paramount importance that we make our best effort to empathize greatly with and work in unison for the betterment and sustainability of everything and -one around us.
It is rarely the big and exciting moments that really matter or make…
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Since Yoko herself doesn’t speak the language, Kurosawa chooses not to subtitle the Uzbek dialogue spoken throughout To the Ends of the Earth, and this decision, combined with the use of a filmic grammar that often feels ported over from the director’s horror films (dramatic lighting, wide frames that emphasize an individual’s feelings of alienation, and eerie silences), serves to envelop us in the psychological space of a young woman whose emotional engagement with a foreign culture, as well as her careerist ambitions and her ability to be open with those around her, are subject to ingrained fears and anxieties.
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Part of InRO’s first round-up for TIFF 2019:
Kiyoshi Kurosawa has been here before. Not to Uzbekistan, where his newest film is set — and which is indeed new territory, geographically speaking — but to this border zone openly contested by opposing modes, genres, and moods. To the Ends of the Earth begins as a kind of travel film, or more precisely, as a document of a TV crew failing to produce one: The host, Yoko (Japanese pop singer Atsuko Maeda, now a regular Kurosawa collaborator), can’t muster the pep required to perform her role as world ambassador for audiences back home, who are conditioned to believe that foreign lands uniformly provoke wonderment and irrepressible perkiness, when in fact disappointment…
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"Luck's something I'm kind of lacking"
Yoko (Atsuko Maeda), a young woman from Tokyo, finds herself far from home working as a travel reporter in Uzbekistan. She's expected to project enthusiasm and be relentlessly cheerful and upbeat on camera, but the loneliness and isolation of being abroad weighs heavily on her, causing her to question the unfulfilling job and whether she should give it up to pursue her true passion, singing.
Almost all films about travel show it as an entirely positive experience. Something that thrilling and life changing. Very few effectively capture the other side of it like To the Ends of the Earth. Kiyoshi Kurosawa absolutely nails the strange pangs of loneliness and little bursts of anxiety that…
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Don't you know it's gonna be alright? Though mysterious Kiyoshi Kurosawa qualities remain. The familiar room geographies with a cultural connection were in repetition. Away with words. There was anxiousness and then there was reassurance. Or when the animals became apart of the mountain. Post-rock classical.
