SCREENSHOT: Asia Film Festival - Two Seasons, Two Strangers

Inspired by two Yoshiharu Tsuge’s manga short stories– “A View of the Seaside” and “Mr. Ben and His Igloo”– the film connects and contrasts two moments in time and space, explore how lives and stories can be viewed, reviewed, and reimagined in cinema. In the first story, a damp, windswept summer by the sea provides the location where two young strangers exchange tentative glances and halting conversation. In the second, a screenwriter, Li, meets the enigmatic innkeeper Benzo at a remote snowy inn. In both, director Sho Mikaye (whose first film, Small, Slow but Steady screened at our 2023 festival) bridges connections between strangers to give us a beautiful, intimate, at times surreal portrait of human connectivity. Best Film Winner: Locarno Film Festival (2025)