Two Seasons, Two Strangers

旅と日々

Japan | 2025 | 89 min

Language: Japanese, Korean, Italian

Subtitles: Finnish, English

For all ages

Director(s): Shō Miyake

Script: Shō Miyake perustuen Yoshiharu Tsugen sarjakuviin "Mr. Ben and his Igloo" ja "海辺の女系" ("A View of the Seaside")

Cast: Shim Eun-kyung, Yuumi Kawai, Mansaku Takada, Shirō Sano, Shinichi Tsutsumi

Production: The Fool

Distribution: TabiCine

Drama

Outsiders On the Road Literature Yearning Friendship Nature Critics Choice At Work

Horizons

Screenings:

Shō Miyake’s Two Seasons, Two Strangers sees the director returning to what has become his primary themes: longing and loneliness. An adaptation of two Yoshiharu Tsuge manga—A View of the Seaside and Mr. Ben and his Igloo—Miyake’s meditative film is similarly split into two parts. The first takes place in an idyllic Japanese coastal town, where two young people, an adolescent boy and a girl, find companionship through conversation. The second half occurs at a snowbound mountain inn, where a vacationing screenwriter encounters a crabby innkeeper. When combined, the diametric halves form a charming diptych whose thematic and emotional profundity make for Miyake’s most accomplished work yet. (…) Miyake is not only one of the great Japanese filmmakers of his generation. He is also among the best at imbuing neglected people with humanity and injecting aching empathy into modest stories. Two Seasons, Two Strangers might be him at his best.

Robert Daniels /

Updated 2026-07-30 17:30:10 UTC