World Premiere | In Competition
Japan, 2026, 106’, Japanese
Directed by: Yoshida Keisuke
Screenplay: Yoshida Keisuke
Cinematography (color): Shida Takayuki
Editing: Komino Masashi
Music: Sebu Hiroko
Producers: Kusunoki Tomoharu, Ozeki Gen
Executive Producer: Kawamura Hideki
Cast: Ichinose Wataru, Kaho, Kohsaka Hayato, Shinohara Atsushi, Urabe Fusako, Yamazaki Nanami, Takada Mansaku, Matsuki Daisuke, Ozawa Mayu, Patrick Harlan
Date of First Release in Territory: June 26th, 2026
Yoshida Keisuke has often portrayed human extremes, such as the cold-eyed serial killer in
Himeanole (2016) and the father driven to a retributive frenzy by the accidental death of his teenage daughter in
Intolerance (2021).
He goes further still in his disturbing, uncompromising social drama
Unchained, in which a stressed public school teacher (the single-named Kaho) and a burly former gangster (Ichinose Wataru), who runs a rehabilitation facility for troubled teens, are confronted by a boy (Kohsaka Hayato) with no discernable moral sense. Committing acts of violence that permanently maim or nearly kill, he is without remorse. “I’m happy to hurt others,” he says. He is the very model of a teenage psychopath.
Scripted by Yoshida based on his own youthful experiences with similar types, the film questions not only whether the boy, Kaito, can be rehabilitated, but also whether trying is worth the suffering of his victims. When Nishi Kengo, the head of the facility, Mirai no Sato, insists to Kaito’s exhausted mom (Urabe Fusako) that her son can change, the skeptical are not wrong in asking “Really?” The film offers no pat response.
Kaito and his blonde partner in crime, Yu (Wada Iori), are delinquent terrors in the class of the above-mentioned middle school teacher, Kusano Fuyuko. Getting no help from the cowardly school administration, she learns of Nishi’s facility and his educational philosophy that for some hard-case kids, talk is not enough. “They need to feel pain,” he says.
Kaito, especially, is on the highway to hell, shooting sparklers that cause painful burns to his human target, beating his mother and clubbing the family dog to death. (We are spared glimpses of the latter two incidents.)
With Kusano acting as a facilitator, Nishi brings Kaito to his seaside facility, where kids of both sexes are put to work, from growing vegetables in a greenhouse to cleaning up trash at the beach.
At the latter activity, Kaito casually shoves a girl, Uta (Yamazaki Nanami), off a concrete embankment, resulting in permanent facial injuries. “Kick him out!” the distraught girl shouts. “He needs support,” Nishi says, but Uta needs protection.
Though Kaito also gets smacks upside the head from Nishi, the man the residents call ‘Chief’ is not a brute. With a violent past that included a stretch in prison, Nishi has turned over a new leaf, using his hands instead of his words only when he feels his message is not getting through.
As Kaito, Kohsaka Hayato looks boyish, with his mop of curly hair, but his blank, smiling malevolence is indelibly chilling. His motivation for being bad is not rage from past traumas: He just enjoys it.
A hint to his personality is seen in his father (Shinohara Atsushi). Living on disability payments for a damaged leg, he is lazy, slovenly and forever blaming others for his problems. Kaito despises this eternal victim. He would rather be the victimizer.
Nishi’s belief that Kaito can change is more than a feel-good catchphrase, but that change, he learns, brings pain to him as well. He endures it and, maybe for the first time in his young life, Kaito finds an adult who, despite everything, can forgive the unforgivable.
But
Unchained also exemplifies that old adage: The squeaky wheel gets greased. Even as it rolls over innocent heads.
Yoshida Keisuke
Yoshida Keisuke (b. 1975) graduated from the Tokyo Visual Arts film school and worked as a lighting director on promotional videos, TV commercials and on the films of mentor Tsukamoto Shinya. In 2006 he made his directorial debut with the youth drama Raw Summer. After that, Yoshida wrote a novel that he later filmed as Café Isobe (2008). His 2015 crime thriller Himeanole was an Udine FEFF selection, as was his 2021 boxing drama Blue and missing (2024).
SELECTED FILMOGRAPHY
2005 – Raw Summer
2008 – Cafe Isobe
2010 – Triangle
2013 – Mugiko-san to
2013 – The Workhorse & the Bigmouth
2014 – Silver Spoon
2016 – Himeanole
2021 – Blue
2024 – missing
2026 – Unchained