This screening will be followed by a post-screening discussion with filmmaker Kaori Oda, moderated by AFA programmer Natalie Khoo

Recording with Mother ‘Working Hands’ (2025)
Runtime: 25 mins
Country: Japan
Language: Japanese with English subtitles
Rating: PG13

Synopsis

Blurring the boundaries between subject and filmmaker, director Kaori Oda observes and listens as her mother recounts and retraces fragments of her life through conversation, gesture, and song. Moving between memory and the present as she goes about her daily routine, the film unfolds into a collaborative portrait.

アンダーグラウンド Underground (2024)
Runtime: 86 mins
Country: Japan
Language: Japanese with English subtitles
Rating: PG

Synopsis

Emerging from the darkness underground, a shadow takes the form of a woman (played by filmmaker and dancer Nao Yoshigai) and journeys across sites marked by memory and loss, notably the Okinawan caves (gama), where many died during World War II. Moving through the caves, tunnels, and submerged landscapes, she encounters traces of the past, from the voices of the dead to rituals of remembrance.

Through a striking interplay of sound, darkness, and fleeting light, Underground blurs the boundaries between documentary and the imagined, visually and sonically investigating memory, history, and trauma across these and other sites in Japan.

About Kaori Oda

Kaori Oda is a filmmaker and artist whose work explores audiovisual and cinematic expression, tracing the invisible histories inscribed in landscapes and human lives.

Oda participated in film.factory, founded by Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr. Her feature debut, Aragane (2015), received a Special Mention at the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival. Her subsequent works, Cenote (2020) and GAMA (2023), have been widely acclaimed internationally. Her latest feature Underground (2024), shot in subterranean spaces across Japan on 16mm film, was selected for the Forum section of the Berlin International Film Festival.

Alongside filmmaking, she also produces and exhibits paintings and moving-image installations.

This screening is part of the programme Reciprocal 2026. For more screenings of this programme. Please click here. 

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