International Premiere | In Competition
Japan, 2025, 109’, Japanese
Directed by: Hiroki Ryuichi
Screenplay: Kato Masato, Kato Yuiko
Cinematography (color): Nabeshima Atsuhiro
Editing: Nomoto Minoru
Producers: Utagawa Yasushi, Hara Takashi
Executive Producer: Teshima Masao
Music: Kato Hisaki
Cast: Nagao Kento, Anna Yamada, Daigo Kotaro, Maeda Atsuko
Date of First Release in Territory: October 24th, 2025
A shy new kid at school falls for the most popular girl in his class: It’s a standard enough premise for a Japanese
seishun eiga (teen movie) since every other protagonist in this enduringly popular Japanese film genre can be called “shy,” particularly when it comes to matters of the heart.
Hiroki Ryuichi ’s
The Sickness Unto Love, which is based on Shasendo Yuki’s novel of the same Japanese title that became a social media sensation, begins with this conventional premise. However, the film turns it into something more compellingly multilayered and universal, reflecting both the darker reaches of the internet and the eternal volatility of young love, in which agony follows ecstasy.
Hiroki brings his unique visual lyricism to this material, building on his past work as a romance genre master, including the 2009 hit
and 2013’s
Crying 100 Times: Every Raindrop Falls. Working with cinematographer and frequent collaborator Nabeshima Atsuhiro, he keeps his camera at a discreet remove to create an atmosphere of watchful calm – as well as youthful freedom and grace when his two principals are riding bicycles together. (Hiroki can summon this mood in other ways, but has a particular affinity for bikes, which he captures in motion with silky tracking shots.)
The story, however, is no ode to youth; rather, it exposes with shocking vividness the cruelty that the young inflict on each other as they devise sadistic new ways of bullying.
The film begins with transfer student Miyamine Nozomu (a mild-mannered Nagao Kento) arriving at this new Kanagawa high school after being assured by his nomadic parents that this is their last move. Tongue-tied when the teacher introduces him to his classmates, he is rescued by class it-girl Yosuga Kei (an enigmatic Anna Yamada), who calls him a friend though they have never spoken to each other.
Taken aback by this lie, Nozomu starts to become her friend for real after he helps her when she falls and injures her leg on a volunteer trash pickup. (An outing that, naturally, she organized.) Kei rewards his good deed with a date, which true to
seishun eiga formula, takes place at an aquarium. But their budding romance gets a jolt when she watches Nozomu’s pet chrysalis metamorphose into a butterfly – and tells him about an internet game, Blue Morpho, whose players commit suicide.
Back at school, class bully Nezuhara Akira (Daigo Kotaro), who is jealous of Kei’s growing closeness with Nozomu, corners him with four friends and tortures him while taking photos. Then, in a perverse turn, Akira and his friends lock Kei inside a wooden gymnastic vault, but Nozomu – whom Kei now calls her “hero” – comes to her rescue. Even more perplexingly, Akira kills himself soon after by jumping off a building.
By this point, it is obvious that more is going on beneath the characters’ surface actions as well as in their minds, and the film chillingly reveals all in due course, including Kei’s true personality and motives. Also, adults are in the background trying to make sense of the dominoes of death falling one after the other, such as a quietly canny police detective played by Maeda Atsuko – but Nozomu is at the center of it all, stubbornly not seeing what is right in front of his nose.
This is frustrating, but Hiroki’s hallmark is emotional honesty –
The Sickness Unto Love being no exception. And its title, which is a play on philosopher Søren Kierkegaard’s famous description of existential despair (“the sickness unto death”), is no fluke.
Hiroki Ryuichi
Born in 1955, Hiroki Ryuichi comes from the pink film industry. He is the film industry’s go-to director for romantic dramas. In 2015 Hiroki returned to his pink film roots with Kabukicho Love Hotel (FEFF 2015), though his other two films for the year, A Man’s Life and Strobe Edge, were romantic dramas. He has continued to alternate between commercial works-for-hire and more personal projects, including Side Job. (2017). The film was named one of the ten best of the year in the Kinema Junpo critics’ poll. More recently, he directed the teen romantic drama The Sickness Unto Love (2025).
SELECTED FILMOGRAPHY
1994 – 800 Two Lap Runners
2003 – Vibrator
2008 – Your Friend
2009 – April Bride
2010 – The Lightning Tree
2015 – Kabukicho Love Hotel
2015 – Side Job.
2022 – Noise
2025 – The Sickness Unto Love