POLITICAL FICTION

TÔI YAMA-NAMI NO HIKARI

2025 / 123 min / color

Great Britain, 1982. Niki, a young Japanese-British writer, decides to visit her mother, Etsuko, to gain a better understanding of her family history. Her goal is to write a book based on her mother’s recollections of post-war Japan. Still grieving after the tragic suicide of her eldest daughter, Etsuko begins to reconstruct a vivid portrait of Nagasaki in 1952 – a city struggling to rebuild itself from the ashes. Central to her narrative is an enigmatic acquaintance with a woman named Sachiko and her young daughter, Mariko, who is haunted by visions of a mysterious woman. As Niki delves deeper into these memories, she discovers subtle fractures and unsettling inconsistencies in her mother’s story. Suspicion grows, fuelling a relentless determination to uncover the truth of what really happened during that fateful summer. Directed by Kei Ishikawa – a distinguished graduate of the Łódź Film School – the film is a masterful adaptation of Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro’s debut novel, created with the author’s personal involvement. Navigating two timelines and two worlds – atomic bomb-scarred Nagasaki and 1980s England – Ishikawa skilfully explores themes of memory, trauma, and lingering guilt. The film’s haunting atmosphere is meticulously crafted through Piotr Niemyjski’s cinematography and Paweł Mykietyn’s score.