The Cinematheque

Vancouver Premiere

“Gorgeous … Conveys [a] rare and delicate grace … The modest, interior nature of [the] stakes is what makes Small, Slow But Steady so achingly moving.”

Guy Lodge, Variety

Drawn from the memoir of boxer Ogasawara Keiko, Miyake Sho’s understated, COVID-set sports drama was a festival standout and a critical darling domestically, earning Kishii Yukino a Japanese Academy Award for her measured central performance. She portrays Keiko, a young, Deaf boxer whose Tokyo gym, the axis of her regimented world, is struggling to outlive the pandemic. Its closure would disrupt not merely her training but the closeness she shares with its owner (Miura Tomokazu, Typhoon Club), a fatherly figure to the emotionally fortified athlete. Cliché though its ingredients may appear, Miyake’s underdog picture, shot on small-gauge 16mm, is almost subversively restrained in execution. Its most consequential conceit concerns not the ring at all but the representation of Keiko’s Deafness: rather than translating sign language uniformly, Miyake renders it as intertitles, subtitles, or sans translation completely, indicative of the relationship Keiko shares with the person.

In Japanese and Japanese Sign Language with (and without) English subtitles

“As beautifully understated as the title suggests … A touching sports drama about the here-and-now, rather than victories or defeats.”

Josh Slater-Williams, Little White Lies

“Visual, embodied forms of communication, including the rhythms of the moving image, dominate this affecting and deceptively modest film … One of the first great pandemic movies.”

Pat Brown, Slant Magazine