Drama

ケイコ 目を澄ませて

Comme des Cinémas

Happinet Phantom Studios

Nagoya Broadcasting Network

The Asahi Shimbun

THEFOOL

France

Japan

日本語

Small, Slow But Steady

Yukino Kishii

Tomokazu Miura

Masaki Miura

Shinichiro Matsuura

Himi Sato

Hiroko Nakajima

Nobuko Sendo

Nana Nakahara

Tomomitsu Adachi

Yutaka Shimizu

Jotaro Tozuka

Ryutaro Yasumitsu

Makiko Watanabe

Yuko Nakamura

Takaya Shibata

Junpei Hashino

Yudai Ishibashi

Yoshinori Miyata

Ruruka Minami

Eri Nagai

Yuki Yamaguchi

Yurina Tsubaki

Goro Sato

Katsuyuki Iwai

Nobu Morimoto

Wataru Monma

Asumi Kikuchi

Yasuhiro Isobe

Masaaki Sakai

Koji Mitsumizo

Shinsuke Kato

Tomoki Kimura

Shô Miyake

Yuta Tsukinaga

Isamu Fujii

Keiko Okawa

Takamitsu Kawai

Daichi Watanabe

Nami Shinozuka

Koichiro Fukushima

Masahiro Handa

Keisuke Konishi

Shunsuke Koga

Shinpei Inoue

Takashi Matsuo

Takashi Ookawa

Yuhiro Matsuoka

Yu Kato

栗原忠慶

SUGIMOTO Yusuke

Yuka Jimbo

Masayoshi Jônai

Shihomi Mochizuki

Hironori Ito

Tomoko Ohtsuka

CinemaSerf

The deaf young “Keiko” (Yukino Kishii) has been taking comfort from her boxing since she was a child and already has two competitive bouts under her belt. With a constant stream of urban racket surrounding her, she lives in a world of silence where her only sounds are those imaginary ones created within her head. With her next competition looming, she learns that change is coming. Her fiercest critic; long-term supporter and ageing boss of her soon to close down gym (Tomokazu Miura) is suffering from failing health and as he loses his sight she must reconcile that she is to lose that oasis that has sustained and inspired her for so long. “Keiko” is not without her demons, and now facing some profound changes to her established routine, she must try to come to terms with her previous decisions and with how they should (or shouldn’t) shape her future. This is set at a time when COVID was rampant, so her abilities to lip-read are curtailed by the mask-wearing population rendering her even more isolated amidst a community who see no visible impairment and so leap to ill-informed judgements about a woman whose abilities to express herself in the more conventional methods are restricted - and Kishii delivers a really quite poignant performance here. Her characterisation of a woman confident, after a fashion, only in the ring but otherwise cutting a shy and almost reticent figure in the real world is touching - but not sentimentally. You can empathise with the difficulties of her efforts to thrive in a world where her disability sets her apart, but I never felt sorry for her. She has a decency to her that she is loathe to compromise despite her limiting options and her dead-end job as a cleaner is not going to be her future. As she seeks out a new place to train we discover that she is not a woman to be willingly constrained by any sense of “comfort zone” and with some intimate photography throughout, we get a slight sense of being under her skin just as she begins to engagingly get under ours. It’s a slow burn, and it’s an incomplete documentary-style look at this crossroads in her life - but I found that just added to the authenticity as her story continues unfolds before us revealing elements of her tenacity and showcasing societal attitudes that are complicated.

Official Trailer [Subtitled]

Small, Slow but Steady Trailer | SGIFF 2022

Best Movies

Small, Slow But Steady

Cast & Crew

Videos

Cast

Yukino Kishii

Tomokazu Miura

Masaki Miura

Shinichiro Matsuura

Himi Sato

Hiroko Nakajima

Nobuko Sendo

Nana Nakahara

Tomomitsu Adachi

Yutaka Shimizu

Box office

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