A charming minimalist piece on a chance encounter between two strangers with a shared passion for skipping stones. There is a Stone has an irresistibly offhand way of capturing a passing moment in which two strangers establish a connection that never fully sparks, celebrating nonproductivity and chance, idleness and lack of purpose. Yoshikawa works at a travel agency and visits an unremarkable small town in the suburbs of Tokyo to do research for a potential new tour. Yamakita used to be a prosperous small railway town but now show no signs of life, with even the main street practically fully closed. During her stay, she takes a walk by the nearby river and meets a man, Doi, who is nimbly and eagerly skipping stones. Doi soon starts suggesting various games they could play by the river, and Yoshikawa becomes so engrossed in the games they invented together that she completely forgets about her project. They look for their “favourite stones”, play with branches and act like carefree children. But as the sun sets, the time they spent together comes to an end. How do we choose our favourite stone? How can we find it if we lose it? Could we even recognize it? If we do find it, what purpose does it serve? Why did we choose that stone in the first place and not a different one? Director Tatsurani Ota concludes that these commonplace questions shouldn’t be ignored. There is a stone requires a different mode of viewing, closer to the way we look at dance or performance art than at films, which are always burdened by narration and the portrayal of characters. “Is there anything nice around here?”, Yoshikawa asks the locals at the beginning. “Something fascinating?” Ota plays with expectations, both hers and ours, imperceptibly redirecting them to the way that the morning light illuminates an infinite number of stones and how that, for some reason, brings a smile to our face. (DP)
Awards and festivals:
Tokyo FILMeX (2023) – world premiere; Berlinale Forum (2023) – international premiere; Jeonju International Film Festival (2023) – Grand Prix
Tatsunari Ota was born in Fukushima in 1989. He studied film and new media under Nobuhiro Suwa and Kiyoshi Kurosawa at the University of Tokyo. His graduation film Bundesliga was shown in 2017 at the Pia Film Festival and at FilMadrid. His second feature film, There is a Stone (2022) premiered at Tokyo FILMeX, and was first shown internationally at Berlinale Forum. It won the Grand Prix for best film at Jeonju IFF in South Korea.
