JFF23: Natchan's Little Secret

Synopsis

A drag queen and owner of a gay bar in Tokyo’s vibrant Shinjuku, Natchan carried her gender identity to the grave and hid it from everyone outside her community – including her own mother. Left to mourn are her family of queens, now faced with an unforeseen reality: they have no clue of her address, origin, or legal family. Virgin, Morilyn and Zubuko find themselves bickering their way on the road to Natchan’s funeral in a remote town in the mountains, determined to keep their identities from posthumously exposing her.

Japan harbours both a beautiful cultural history of gender-bending performance (such as in traditional Noh and kabuki theatre and the women’s theatrical troupe Takarazuka), and like many countries, a contemporary social stigma around it. Grappling with an all-too-common reality of the LGBT+ closet, this comedy has an underlying sense of cultural complexity, and is a heartfelt road trip into self-expression, family and reckoning with loss and acceptance.