The Cinematheque

“A musical, a travelogue, a feminist awakening—every minute is surprising … Maeda Atsuko is [Kurosawa’s] Anna Karina.”

Amy Taubin, Artforum

Kurosawa Kiyoshi’s reputation as a master of genre is often attached to just one: horror. But the director has multiple masterpieces that wander far outside its parameters. There’s a strong case to be made that To the Ends of the Earth, which stars former AKB48 member Maeda Atsuko, is the latest example of this kind of major achievement. Maeda plays Yoko, a TV presenter shooting a doc-travelogue in Uzbekistan with a small crew. The lone woman on the trip, her monolingual limitations—and distance from her firefighter boyfriend—strand her in a liminal, reflective state, one that alternately gives her license to explore an unfamiliar place and fear that, as she puts it, ​“I’m running away from what I really want to do.” Kurosawa uses the nonfiction elements of the film to give Yoko’s on-camera work a sense of unfamiliarity and suspense, while the film’s dramatic current ​“off-camera” is disguised, then developed, in a way that crystallizes the dread and transcendence of new experience.

In Japanese, Uzbek, and English with English subtitles

“A masterful film … Demonstrates—perhaps more than any of Kurosawa’s work this decade—the director’s casual control of disparate genres, tones, and moods.”

Lawrence Garcia, MUBI Notebook

“A sly magician of space, Kurosawa Kiyoshi pinpoints Yoko’s malaise with finely tuned precision … The film builds toward a haunting centerpiece, one of the year’s true revelations.”

Edo Choi, Reverse Shot