Hanging Garden

As part of NYAFF’s Spotlight on auteur filmmaker Toshiaki Toyoda, NYAFF is honored to present a special 20th anniversary screening of Hanging Garden, Toyoda’s unnerving portrait of one family’s secrets. Before Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Tokyo Sonata, Kore-eda’s Still Walking, and Sion Sono’s Noriko’s Dinner Table, there was Toshiaki Toyoda’s Hanging Garden, the film that started it all. Family as a nightmare and a font of terror, discord, and disquiet. A visually stunning and surreal tale of desperate times, in which we feel the pressure of things unspoken rippling through an unusual 20th-century Japanese family, the film features an unforgettable gallery of neurotic portraits presided over by a camera that travels with unhindered calm, composure, and Toyoda’s incomparable mad auteur style. Starring Kyoko Koizumi, Anne Suzuki, Itsuji Itao, and Masahiro Hirota as the seemingly happy but seriously disturbed Kyobashi family, this film is essential viewing for fans of Japanese cult cinema.