Director Marina Tsukada is now about halfway through a decade-long project called #Toki (Time), filming young nonprofessional actors in her native Nagano Prefecture as their characters mature from childhood to adulthood.
Obvious comparisons are the groundbreaking British documentary series “Up,” which has been tracing the lives of its principals since 1964, and Richard Linklater’s 2014 “Boyhood,” which featured the same actors filmed over the course of 12 years.
1/
Two fruits of Tsukada’s ongoing project are the shorts “Mitsuki” and “Sekai” (World), which have been combined into an anthology feature that feels like one intimately revelatory film, though the stories of its two segments never intertwine.
Rather than being driven by plot, “Mitsuki” and “Sekai” unveil their young protagonists’ inner lives in unexpected ways. And while wrestling with the usual adolescent dilemmas, both girls reveal their own hidden fires.
2/
Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe used to talk about building a Japan in which women could “shine.” In their very different ways, these kids are already glowing.