News

Inspired by the autobiographical book “Makenaide!” by Keiko Ogasawara, the first hearing-impaired professional woman boxer, Small, Slow But Steady is a moving character study powered by an unforgettable performance from rising star Yukino Kishii.

Keiko is a young pro boxer with a hearing impairment. Although boxing is a real challenge for her, the club she belongs to is like a second home. After surprising everyone by winning her first two professional fights, she soon learns that the club chairman, the only person who had believed in her as a boxer, is plagued by health issues and the gym is about to shut its doors for good. Confused about what the future holds, Keiko prepares for her third professional bout but perhaps the biggest challenge she faces is trying to understand the true nature of her will to fight.

Small, Slow But Steady is a one-of-a-kind sports film with a raw...

Shichiro Fukazawa's story “Narayama” is a haunting tale of ubasute, an ancient practice in Japanese folklore of carrying an elderly family member to a remote area, where they are left to die. Fukazawa's short story has notably been adapted twice. The most popular and successful version is Shohei Imamura's “The Ballad of Narayama,” released in 1983, which was both a critical and financial success and is regarded as a classic. Yet, the first adaptation of the powerful tragedy that came long before is a film that is very different in style from Imamura's depiction but equally wonderful. That magnificent picture is Keisuke Kinoshita's “The Ballad of Narayama.”

on Amazon by clicking on the image below

By the late 1950s, Keisuke Kinoshita had made quite a name for himself, especially after having graced moviegoers with his powerful film, “Twenty-Four Eyes.” Around the same time,...

The year is 2020, but according to the autobiographical book it is based on, the ‘monogatari’ of Sho Miyake’s truly impressive drama “Small, Slow but Steady” should be set in the 2010’s. Looking at it, this is not the only trick the audience falls for – the film’s beginning fools you into believing that you are watching a real deal, a documentary about the female boxer Keiko Ogasawara (Yukino Kishii) who entered history as the first professional with dissability in this sport. This is not only due to the opening cards informing the audience about the main protagonist’s background and her inborn sensorineural hearing loss which resulted in no hearing in either ear, but equally as much by observing her during a long, intense training in the gym. We are additionally told that she became a licenced professional boxer in 2019 with an amazing victory in her first fight.

What drops of cinema are still to be wrung from boxing? The new Japanese drama Small, Slow But Steady is about as calm and modest as its title suggests, but there are surprising swings within those margins. Aesthetically it takes some cues from certain films of the 1960s, notably those of the late Yasujirō Ozu, but its drama could hardly be more contemporary. Gleamed, if not quite ripped, from the headlines, it partially tells the true story of Keiko Ogasawara, a female boxer who went pro in 2009, becoming the first hearing-impaired person in Japan to ever do so, then won her first fight with a shock first round knockout. Can’t say I’ve seen that one before.

Loosely adapting Ogasawara’s 2011 autobiography Makenaide, director Shô Miyake moves this unlikely story to the present day and creates not only one of the best low-key sports films of recent years, but...

The year is 2020, but according to the autobiographical book it is based on, the ‘monogatari’ of Sho Miyake’s truly impressive drama “Small, Slow but Steady” should be set in the 2010’s. Looking at it, this is not the only trick the audience falls for – the film’s beginning fools you into believing that you are watching a real deal, a documentary about the female boxer Keiko Ogasawara (Yukino Kishii) who entered history as the first professional with dissability in this sport. This is not only due to the opening cards informing the audience about the main protagonist’s background and her inborn sensorineural hearing loss which resulted in no hearing in either ear, but equally as much by observing her during a long, intense training in the gym. We are additionally told that she became a licenced professional boxer in 2019 with an amazing victory in her first fight. Add...

Back in 2019 when life was still normal, Sho Miyake came to Berlin with his love drama “And Your Bird Can Sing” that screened in the Panorama section to critical acclaim. The film was praised for many things including its dreamy photography but then again – Hidetoshi Shinomiya was behind it, the same cinematographer who gave the extra touch to Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Oscar-nominated drama “Drive My Car”.

Although primarily known for his live-action movies, Sho Miyake was always interested in documentary filmmaking.There was “Cockpit” (2015), a film about rapper Omsb creating a new song with his friends followed by the documentary ”Experience in Material No. 58 / A Return Of Bruno Taut 2016” about the architect Ryoji Suzuki and his body of work, which they co-directed together. The love for documentaries is very visible in his latest title “Small, Slow but Steady”, a film based on the life of the former boxing champion Keiko Ogasawara who was born deaf,...

Not since Alfred Hitchcock’s 1927 silent “The Ring” has there been a boxing film quite so quiet as “Small, Slow But Steady,” a gentle but hard-edged study of a flyweight female pugilist in suburban Tokyo. More concerned with the wear and tear of everyday life than pummeling sound and fury, director Shô Miyake’s measured, unsentimental adaptation of a memoir by Keiko Ogasawara — who turned professional despite the difficulties of lifelong deafness — turns out to be somewhat aptly described by its own title, though none of those adjectives quite conveys its rare and delicate grace. A highlight of the Encounters program at this year’s Berlinale, this unassuming gem should turn the heads of specialist distributors and further festival programmers, despite its general avoidance of crowd-courting tactics.

In adapting Ogasawara’s book “Makenaide!” — which translates, with an imperative urgency the film doesn’t share, as “Do Not Lose!” — Miyake and...

Shô Miyake’s Small, Slow But Steady is a rare breed of a sports film. Composed, meditative and, ultimately, sensitive, the usual aesthetics of boxing as spectacular and drenched in adrenaline are abandoned in favour of a silent study of ritualistic gestures, more reminiscent of Frederick Wiseman’s Boxing Gym (2010) than of bombastic pop-culture achievements like Rocky. Miyake is not concerned with that greater-than-life, climatic feeling of overcoming your opponent, but with the sporadic nature of finding the will to fight – in sport, and in life.

Based on Keiko Ogasawara’s autobiographical Makenaide! (i.e. Don’t lose/Don’t give up), the film follows recently turned pro-fighter Keiko Ogawa (Yukino Kishii) as she trains in a small, run-down, once prestigious gym on one secluded, yet scenic street in Tokyo. Keiko was born Deaf, and as her coach (veteran actor Tomokazu Miura) explains at one point to a curious journalist,...

Keisuke Kinoshita’s 1958 classic The Ballad of Narayama gets the Criterion treatment, an experimental film featuring the use of one of Japan’s signature cultural styles, Kabuki Theater, despite its cultural popularity still on the wane post-World War II. But with its exaggeration and extreme stylization, Kinoshita taps into the tragic, melancholy heart of this fable concerning abandonment of the elderly as a socially sanctioned tradition of necessity, as developed by poverty stricken ancestors.

Based on a novel by Shichiro Fukazawa, a subsequent adaptation from new wave Japanese auteur Shohei Imamura was released in 1983, a more horrific and grisly treatment of the source text. But Kinoshita’s kabuki opera, with its grand flourishes and over the top nature still manages to touch on the horrors of inhumane practices, made all the more powerful with a moving lead performance and the haunting score and narration, reminding us constantly of impending death...