(Ryūsuke Hamaguchi, Japan, 2013, 54 min, in Japanese with English subtitles)

Following the death of his father, Chihiro abates his loneliness by practicing a unique, water-like form of modern dance with his friend Naoya in which the young men’s hands and bodies intertwine with each other but never touch. Things take a strange turn when Naoya’s girlfriend breaks up with him, setting off a sequence of events that leads to an unexplained tragedy at a nearby river. A prequel to an as-of-yet-unmade feature film, Touching the Skin of Eeriness offers more questions than it can answer, creating a powerfully evocative sense of mystery that finds Hamaguchi emphasizing mood and tone over dialogue or exposition.

Synopsis courtesy of Japan Society.

(Ryūsuke Hamaguchi, Japan, 2016, 38 min, in Japanese with English subtitles)

Yuzo shares his apartment with high schooler Mitsuki, with whom he hangs out between doing work as a censorship mosaic engineer for pornography. However, there’s more to the duo’s seemingly odd partnership than is immediately apparent, and when a film student reaches out to Yuzo and proposes to interview him for a documentary about her dead sister, Yuzo is prompted to reveal Mitsuki’s secret. Originally made as a reward for contributors to the crowdfunding campaign of Hamaguchi’s 2016 film Happy Hour, this tender ghost story displays the director’s penchant for investigating hidden emotions and blurring the lines between past and present.

Synopsis courtesy of Japan Society.