What does it take to drain a person of their humanity? According to Iwasaki Yusuke, a convenience store uniform and a morning meeting ritual will do it. That unsettling observation is the foundation of “AnyMart,” his Berlinale Forum debut feature — and one that carries the weight of personal experience. Iwasaki watched it happen to his own father, a lively town liquor store owner who became, in his son’s telling, “inorganic and lacking humanity” after taking over a convenience store.
Sometani Shota stars as Sakai, a convenience store clerk who clocks in, recites the employee pledges, restocks the shelves, and feels nothing — until new recruit Ogawa (Erika Karata) arrives as one of several anomalies that send the store’s standardized operations spiraling toward bloody ends.
Fusing Aki Kaurismäki-esque deadpan with Kurosawa Kiyoshi-inflected slow-burn horror, the film follows Iwasaki’s short “Void,” which played International Film Festival Rotterdam’s Tiger Competition in 2024 and featured in anthology chiller “NN4444,” the first title from Nothing New — the fledgling company led by producer Hayashi Kentaro that executive produced “AnyMart” and handles international sales beginning at EFM. Nishimura Masahiko also stars; Tohokushinska Film Corporation produces.
Variety spoke with Iwasaki ahead of the world premiere:
This film has a remarkable acuity in how it captures the absurdity of working retail — in the alternatingly cramped and empty spaces the workers occupy; the ritualistic tasks they’re forced to complete; and the rules and regulations they must rigidly follow. Are you drawing from personal experience of working retail?
Iwasaki Yusuke: My father was a convenience store owner, so convenience stores were both very familiar to me and at the same time rather suspicious. When I visited his workplace in my childhood, there would be many adults following strict rules. While they would talk to me normally, by wearing uniforms and going through these rituals of morning meetings, any kind of person would have their individuality stripped away and become part of the store. I found that interesting. My father was no exception to this rule. He had originally been a lively, friendly town liquor store owner, but after starting the convenience store, I felt he transformed into something somewhat inorganic and lacking humanity – although not to the extent of the store owner in this film. Witnessing that transformation was a formative experience for me, so I decided to create a work with a convenience store as the central motif. By the way, if I were to work part-time in retail, I would probably go crazy in two or three days, unable to endure the strict rules.
Convenience stores exist everywhere as if replicated; they’re always open; and they operate normally at any time. That’s peculiar, and I think there’s a creepiness to it that’s unique to Japan. Above all, the contrast between the information overload and brightness inside the store and the extreme lack of human heart within it was striking to me. Employees and customers exchange many words, but none of them bring out emotions – these are inorganic exchanges. Both those who come to shop and those who work there have stopped being human.
Were you looking to speak to a universal experience of working in retail spaces with this film, or were you looking to speak specifically to the experience of existing within a convenience store?
Since my father ran a convenience store, I did want to specifically make it a convenience store story. There’s another episode I experienced, as a consumer. One day, while busy with work, I entered a convenience store without thinking to grab a light meal, picked up a chicken salad, and felt horror at myself mindlessly devouring it with an expressionless face. I didn’t actually want to eat chicken salad. I picked it up thoughtlessly because it was there, because it was efficient. I became anxious that I might be more dominated by efficiency, convenience, and systems than I thought, and I decided to make a film about this lack of feeling alive.
At the heart of this film is a push and pull between the individual and the collective; what is morally right and what is deemed socially ‘correct’. In this sense, the film and its setting are a distinctly Japanese microcosm. Tell me about mapping these ideas to this setting and these characters.
Living according to social rules and systems is easy, but it’s an endless living hell. If the owner of the store is the embodiment of the system, having mostly killed his emotions, then at the opposite end is Ogawa, who lives by morality and her own sense of righteousness. However, deviants like Ogawa, the Quiche shop owner, and the cross-dressing man who visits the store are not respected in modern Japan – they either conform to the system or perish. It’s very painful, but it’s a fact, so I made their fates in the film reflect that.
And the protagonist Sakai (“Sakai” means “boundary”) is an example of neither of these positions – he simply exists. Rather than struggling between the two positions, he is simply an observing lump of meat, i.e. a chilled chicken salad. I think most modern Japanese people are like Sakai, including myself.
Sometani Shota is well-known for his trademark dispassionate and vacant facial expression — he has a distinctive face, and he suits this film well. This starts out as a fairly archetypal performance from him, but you allow him to grow it into something much more emotionally rich and nuanced. Did you consider other actors for the role of Sakai, or was it always going to be Sometani?
I’ve loved Sometani as an actor for a long time, and he was the first person who came to mind. Sakai is a difficult role. Rather than being a protagonist, he’s an observer. He rarely takes action, and must express emotions only through subtle facial expressions. The eloquence of his expressions, his nihilistic appearance, and explosive emotional power – I’m convinced that no one but Sometani could have played Sakai.
The film’s tricky tonal balance is striking, shifting from a satirical comedy to psychological horror with weight and impact to it. Could you elaborate on that balance, and on your use of quick cuts to disturbing imagery?
At first, I intended to make a more consistent, evil horror film. However, I wanted to depict the reality of the convenience store situation more vividly, and I wanted to depict Sakai’s inner self in more detail. As a result, comedic scenes naturally increased, and it transformed the film into a unique fusion where laughter and fear exist in close proximity. The disturbing images that increase in the second half of the film represent the blurring of the boundary between life and death. There are many remnants of the horror development I had originally conceived, and I kept them because they were interesting. It was originally supposed to be a story with more ghosts and such, but the real-world system the film presents was horror enough.
Sound design was evidently a clear focus of yours with this film.
Since the boundary between where you should laugh and where you should feel fear is ambiguous in this work, the sound design had an important role in clarifying that. Since it’s not a typical horror film story, I incorporated a dark digital ambience that you don’t usually hear in films. Pas Tasta, who handled the score, are an amazing music group comprised of people with various musical backgrounds. I definitely want people to listen to them.
Does your day-to-day life on set sometimes sink into similar patterns to the workplace patterns of the film, or is filmmaking a workspace where you feel you can escape from that monotonous drudgery?
In my regular work as a director of commercials, I only accept projects that are interesting and exciting, precisely to avoid falling into such routines. For now, it’s stimulating and fun, but when I’m writing storyboards at night, there are certainly moments when the thought “Wait, does this continue infinitely!?” suddenly crosses my mind. But filmmaking is more stimulating and more difficult than other work – it’s a precious thing that pulls me up from such complacency. It is really difficult though [laughs].
What filmmakers inspire your approach and style? I thought of Kurosawa Kiyoshi and Hong Sang-soo, equally some American television dark comedies.
I absolutely love Kurosawa Kiyoshi, and I’ve been greatly influenced by him. The conversation scenes inside the store may have been influenced by Aki Kaurismäki. I’ve recently gotten into Hong Sang-soo, and he’s become a director that I love.
You’re a first-time feature filmmaker. What was your pathway into filmmaking?
Around the time that I had solidified my style as a TV commercial director and became able to choose my work, I was approached by my old friend Hayashi Kentaro, the representative of Nothing New. I’m a person like Sakai who can’t do anything on my own, so thanks to his enthusiastic invitation, I was able to tackle filmmaking. I rewrote the plot two or three times due to budget and content interest. With the keyword “convenience store” as a prompt, “AnyMart” was born fairly quickly, and we started moving toward production.
What goals do you have as you move forward in your career? Are you working on any further projects currently?
As a director of commercials, I have a strong desire first and foremost to make Japan’s empty advertising industry more interesting. I came into this industry longing for the interesting and stylish ads of the 1980s. In regards to feature films, I have a feature horror film in the planning stage. Since “AnyMart” turned out to be a comedy-like work, I’m aiming this time to make a truly scary horror that makes your hair stand on end.
In one scene, a character says that “you’ve got to do what you love as your job, because we all die someday.” Are you fulfilling that sentiment for yourself by filmmaking? Is this what you love most?
In advertising production, I certainly feel that way. What I create is important to me, but what I love most is collaborating happily with beloved colleagues and talent, and I can currently achieve that in my position as a director of commercials. In filmmaking however, there are many painful and difficult things, mainly in the scriptwriting stage, and I still feel like a baby. I hope I can enjoy filmmaking going forward with the same fun and lightness as I do advertising production.
