Premiering at the Busan International Film Festival, "Hinotama: Ball of Fire" explores family breakdown, estrangement, and the forces that pull us apart.
A still from Yaza Takenoshin's "Hinotama: Ball of Fire," which premiered at the Busan International Film Festival in 2026.
Hinotama: Ball of Fire—screening in the Busan International Film Festival's Vision section for emerging Asian talent—is an impressive debut from 24-year-old filmmaker Yaza Takenoshin, who is unafraid to wear his heart on his sleeve.
"I was super nervous [at the premiere]," said Takenoshin. "Everything about this is very new to me. When I started shooting the film, I was super nervous, too, like every single step."
The story follows a young man (Riku Onishi) watching as his parents' marriage falls apart. His relationships with his parents, his girlfriend, and his younger brother are pushed to the margins as he becomes obsessed with hunting down a mysterious "ball of fire" that may or may not exist in a nearby forest.
The hunt offers him an escape from the realities unfolding around him. The film speaks to how often it is the things left unsaid that affect relationships most deeply.
An Unlikely Journey to Busan
A philosophy-and-film student at Harvard University, Takenoshin wrote the script between classes. He then reached out to a filmmaker he admired for advice on how to get his movie made, before shooting and editing it in his bedroom using equipment borrowed from his mother's office. The film went on to secure a world premiere at the Busan International Film Festival.
The story behind his debut reads like a film script in itself.
The film was shot by Yoshio Kitagawa, best known in recent years for his work with director Ryusuke Hamaguchi on Evil Does Not Exist (2023), which won the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival.
An avowed Hamaguchi fan, Takenoshin contacted Kitagawa on Instagram for advice, more on a whim than with any confidence that he would even receive a reply.
"I had no intention of asking him to be my cinematographer. I didn't think that was a possibility at all," Takenoshin explained. "He was kind enough to say yes, and we met for coffee. We talked about very practical questions, and at the end of our meeting I gave him my script. Two weeks later, he gave me a call and said, 'I'm going to make this film.'"
An Overwhelming Force
Much of Hinotama: Ball of Fire unfolds indoors, where the camera frames the action to capture the tense stillness between family members, at times resembling a series of carefully composed paintings.
The outdoor scenes are similarly deliberate in their framing, but take on the quality of landscapes, with nature seeming to overwhelm the characters.
"I was trying to use nature as this kind of larger force that's pushing them in some direction," the director explains.
The effect is to make us acutely aware of our position as spectators. At times, watching these characters feels almost like an act of intrusion, as we observe their relationships strain and the family slowly fracture.
Takenoshin first ventured into filmmaking as a teenager, driven by a fascination with Japan's nuclear industry. That interest led to The Story of the Largest Kettle in Japan (2019), a film he made at 16 that earned a national award.
The experience eventually led him to realise that filmmaking might be his future. Hinotama: Ball of Fire marks an assured debut that, in its own quiet way, leaves us thinking about family and how life sometimes seems to pull us apart from the people we love – or once loved.
"There seems to be some kind of inevitability to the family fracturing, and I was trying to create that sense of destiny," says Takenoshin.
Author: Mathew Scott