Tomoko Matsunashi

The road to the sky is a ladder. The only "vertical road movie" in the world. Kimama-chan is a liar, selfish and extremely pushy. She is a liar, selfish and extremely pushy, so much so that even one of her few friends plans a trip with another girl. When Kimama finds out about this, instead of feeling sorry for herself, she prepares a long ladder and starts to observe and disturb her rivals in order to outwit them. But it's all for naught and she sets off on a journey up the remaining ladder. After meeting and parting with a mysterious man, the journey turns into a journey to find something. Will Kimama-chan be able to find "something"? Will she be able to come back to earth after the climb? I wanted to make a vertical road movie", says the director. Perhaps the only one of its kind in the world, what awaits her in the sky?

Machida, an aspiring filmmaker, heads to the room of a stranger where he thinks his girlfriend Yukiko might be in there, while rolling his brand new video camera. The two end up breaking up, but Machida thinks that he may have been the main cause of the breakup. Newly equipped with a new video camera, he sets out to make a film to reevaluate their relationship. As he continues to film, the lines between fiction and reality become hard to understand.

Elusive memories flash in the back of his head. Visualising the people and landscapes as they are there, as casually as they are there, should be a difficult task, just as the protagonist struggled with the writing process. However, the film succeeds in vividly depicting the subtle atmosphere felt only in primary schools and only in junior high school, thanks in part to the fine performances of Watanabe Sayaka and her friends, who brilliantly play everyone from primary schools students to preparatory school students. There are no particularly dramatic episodes, but after watching the film, you will feel nostalgic for all the people in the film.