The BlackBerry People’s Choice Midnight Madness Award goes to Sion Sono’s Why Don't You Play in Hell? (Jigoku de Naze Warui).
The film follows two men, Muto and Ikegami, who hate each other. Muto desperately wants to help his daughter Mitsuko star in a movie. Meanwhile, Ikegami falls in love with Mitsuko, knowing that she's the daughter of his foe. Hirata, a filmmaker, and Koji, a young movie-lover, get dragged into this complicated situation that heads into an unexpected direction.
First runner up is Mike Flanagan for OCULUS and the second runner up is Álex de la Iglesia for Witching & Bitching.
A renegade film crew becomes embroiled with a yakuza clan feud in this wild, perverse and blood-soaked orgy of outrageousness from cult director Sion Sono (Suicide Club).
A renegade film crew known as "The Fuck Bombers"! Yakuza gangsters hell-bent on revenge! Decapitated heads! A French kiss from a mouth full of broken glass! And a catchy toothpaste commercial jingle … ?!
Cult film director Sion Sono, known for his outlandish work including Suicide Club, Love Exposure and Cold Fish, is back with Why Don't You Play in Hell?, a wild, perverse, and bloody tale guaranteed to leave the audience slack-jawed in shock.
Hirata (Hiroki Hasegawa) dreams of being a movie director, and with his ragtag film crew, The Fuck Bombers, he intends to shoot a masterpiece. Meanwhile, a feud between yakuza clans heats up after big boss Muto's wife massacres rival boss Ikegami's gang, jeopardizing her daughter Michiko's acting career in the process. Ten years later, and days before his wife's release from jail, Muto must somehow prove to her that Michiko has become a big-screen star. And so, the ruthless criminal underground and the happy-go-lucky Fuck Bombers collide in an orgy of blood and B-roll.
Based on an early script by Sono, this extravaganza has autobiographical undercurrents in its tribute to the undying pursuit of one's cinematic dreams. It features a number of familiar Japanese character actors, including Jun Kunimura (Hard Boiled) and Shinichi Tsutsumi (Dangan Runner, Unlucky Monkey, Monday) as the feuding yakuza bosses, and Tak Sakaguchi (star of Ryûhei Kitamura's Versus, which premiered at Midnight Madness) in a role that mirrors the actor's own discovery by a director back when he was a back-alley brawler.
Why Don't You Play in Hell? is a riproaring tale of cinematic passions slashed and shredded into a bloody mess by yakuza swords.
COLIN GEDDES
Special thanks to The Japan Foundation, Toronto.
Director Biography
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- Sion Sono
- Sion Sono was born in Toyokawa, Japan. An accomplished poet, he attended Hosei University, where he began making 8mm films. His feature films include Suicide Club (01),Into a Dream (05), Love Exposure (08), which won the FIPRESCI Prize at Berlin, andGuilty of Romance (11). The Festival has screened many of his films, including Cold Fish(10), Himizu (11), and The Land of Hope (12). Why Don't You Play in Hell? is his latest feature.
