Woman of the Photographs

Middle-aged, solitary photographer Kai (Hideki Nagai) is afraid of women. This doesn’t keep him from shamelessly retouching their photographs when asked; he’s an expert with the Photoshop brush. On a trek in the forest, he encounters Kyoko (Itsuki Otaki), a model strangely perched in a tree with a fresh scar on her chest. Back at the studio, she asks Kai if he can erase the scar in her future photographs. He accepts, and Kyoko’s social media keeps growing. But as time goes, she grows hesitant to show her fans an increasingly manufactured version of herself. Kai feels a rare pang of responsibility, motivated, for the first time, to challenge his perception of women as praying mantis. (Fantasia International Film Festival)