JFF26 Anymart

Open 24 hours a day, convenience stores offer the same products, the same greetings and the same fluorescent glow to anyone who walks through their doors. Amid a maze of power lines and grey apartment blocks, they exist as liminal spaces… simultaneously everywhere and nowhere. Sakai (Shota SOMETANI) has worked at AnyMart long enough to stop noticing any of it. He clocks in, recites the employee pledges, restocks the shelves and drifts through every shift like a ghost. His manager demands cheerful, frictionless service, but Sakai just cannot seem to master it. Then new recruit Ogawa (Erika KARATA) arrives, bringing with her a series of unsettling anomalies that send the store's familiar routines spiralling towards bloody, darkly comic extremes. Inspired by his father’s experiences as a convenience store owner, director Yusuke IWASAKI transforms one of Japan's most iconic and ubiquitous institutions into a chilling reflection on late capitalism, systemic conformity and the creeping horror of a life lived on autopilot. Sharp, wickedly funny and constantly off-kilter, this striking debut feature announces director Iwasaki as an exciting new voice in Japanese horror. Winner of the FIPRESCI Jury Prize at the 76th Berlin International Film Festival, AnyMart is a wildly unpredictable film that continually subverts expectations.