Sawako Decides
| Sawako Decides | |
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Japanese Sawako Decides poster
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| Directed by | Yuya Ishii |
| Produced by | Mayumi Amano |
| Written by | Yuya Ishii |
| Starring |
Hikari Mitsushima Masashi Endō Kira Aihara |
| Music by | Samon Imamura |
| Cinematography | Yukihiro Okimura |
| Edited by | Koichi Takahashi |
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Release date
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Running time
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111 minutes |
| Country | Japan |
| Language | Japanese |
Sawako Decides (川の底からこんにちは Kawa no Soko kara Konnichiwa?, "Hello from the bottom of the river") is a 2009 Japanese comedy-drama film directed by Yuya Ishii. The film stars Hikari Mitsushima as Sawako.
Sawako Decides premiered at Tokyo at the PIA Film Festival in 2009. At the Fantasia Film Festival, the film won the award for Best Feature Film and Best Actress for Hikari Mitsushima.
In present-day Tokyo, 23-year-old Sawako Kimura (Hikari Mitsushima) is in her fifth part-time job and with her fifth boyfriend since leaving high school. Kenichi Arai (Masashi Endō) is a second-rate designer at the toy company where Sawako works, and has a four-year-old daughter, Kayoko (Kira Aihara). Kenichi keeps pressing Sawako to marry him, but she considers him "only average" (as indeed she considers herself "nothing special"), and on top of that she dislikes children. At the same time, Sawako's uncle, Nobuo (Ryo Iwamatsu) keeps phoning, asking her to return to her hometown, as her father Tadao (Kotaro Shiga) is dying from cirrhosis of the liver and wants her to take over the failing freshwater clam packing company he owns. When Kenichi is fired from his toy-designer job, he persuades the reluctant Sawako to accept the offer to return home, and to take him and Kayoko along into the bargain. The trio arrive in the Pacific coast town of Kawaminami in southern Japan, where Sawako finds herself scorned by the womenfolk for having run away from home five years earlier with her high school tennis club captain, Yoshio (Ryu Morioka). At this point Sawako is forced to decide what she wants to do with the company, Kenichi, Kayoko, and her whole life.
Actress Hikari Mitsushima found the story of the film amusing and personally negotiated with director Yuya Ishii, saying that he would "regret it if he didn't cast me."
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