ZAMEK Culture Centre

Yoshii makes his living through retail flipping. He builds his life on risk; whatever catches his eye at online auctions, he buys cheaply and then sells at a profit, embellishing the deal with a false narrative about the uniqueness of the items. Completely absorbed in his ambitions, he builds a small empire of success – but the circle of those he has deceived along the way, now seeking revenge, begins to close in on him.

“Cloud” marks Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s return to genre filmmaking. Filled with the familiar devices of a seasoned master, his latest thriller hovers between the techno–horror of “Pulse” and the cool dissection of social fears found in “Cure”. In “Cloud”, the Japanese director combines a critical perspective on a modern economy entangled in the trade of illusion with an ambiguous exploration of the condition of masculinity – simmering with resentment, prone to panic, trapped within the fragile structure of its own ego. Kurosawa is unrivalled in his ability to expose the horror of everyday life – he holds the camera in silence, turning the slightest shadow into a harbinger of disaster. His art of building tension lies in whispers of dread: slowly saturating the frame with unease until banal gestures and ordinary spaces crack under the weight of hidden phobias.

CLOUD, dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Japan 2024, 124’