Eight minutes to escape your body, your room, and capitalism itself.
Inspired by the Japanese phenomenon of the so-called Hikokomori, (literally: pulling inward), whereby young people choose to flee from the pressure of a society brought into line into the total isolation of their own room. They have lost the ability to distinguish public face and true self. In this way Akio (Japanese: Light) withdraws albeit with a specific goal. He wants to free himself from the pressures of the globalized society, from his own fears, and ultimately from the limitations of his own body as well as concepts like space and time.
Direction
Ashton-Jones crams a feature's worth of ideas into eight minutes.
Cinematography
Room becomes universe; walls dissolve into psyche.
Sound
Audio design that crawls inside your skull.
Director
Joanna Ashton-Jones
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Hikikomori affects over a million Japanese youth; this film weaponizes that crisis into transcendence metaphor.
The 8-minute runtime mirrors attention spans we're told destroyed us — yet demands total surrender.
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