Japanese director Sho Miyake, whose “Two Seasons, Two Strangers” won the Golden Leopard at Locarno in 2025, will get his first North American retrospective at New York’s Metrograph from Nov. 7–17. It is one stop on a Japan Foundation tour of 14 cities in eight countries.
The Metrograph program, titled “Unspoken Gestures: The Films of Sho Miyake,” is co-organized and presented by the Japan Foundation. Miyake will attend in person over the opening weekend, and select encore screenings will follow the main run.
The series brings together eight of Miyake’s own titles. They include his 2012 debut feature “Playback,” which premiered at Locarno, and “The Cockpit” (2014), a 64-minute film that watches producer-rapper OMSB and his collaborator Bim make a track in a small suburban Tokyo apartment. “And Your Bird Can Sing” (2018) screens with the 2016 short “August 8th,” and “Two Seasons, Two Strangers” is paired with the 2016 short “Nagahama.” Boxing drama “Small, Slow but Steady” (2022) and “All the Long Nights” (2024) round out the lineup.
Miyake has also picked two films that influenced his work as carte blanche selections: David Elfick’s 1973 surf film “Crystal Voyager” and Aoyama Shinji’s 2007 drama “Sad Vacation,” the final part of Aoyama’s “Kitakyushu Saga,” starring Asano Tadanobu. He will introduce both on Nov. 8, after Q&As following “Small, Slow but Steady” and “Two Seasons, Two Strangers” the day before.
“For a long time now, Sho Miyake has been one of international cinema’s best-kept secrets, each of his films landing quietly but forcefully amid the cacophony of contemporary film culture. With this retrospective, we’re giving the man a microphone and calling on New York audiences to attend the voice of an essential Japanese film artist,” said Metrograph programmer Edo Choi.
The tour opens on Nov. 3 in Washington, D.C., where the Japan Information & Culture Center at the Embassy of Japan will screen “Two Seasons, Two Strangers” and Miyake will join the Q&A remotely. Oklahoma follows from Nov. 9–11, with screenings at the University of Oklahoma’s Meacham Auditorium in Norman and the Oklahoma City Museum of Art. Miyake will also teach a masterclass for a university screenwriting class that is closed to the public.
Los Angeles hosts the program Nov. 13–15 at the Japan Foundation, Los Angeles, UCR Arts at the University of California, Riverside, and the American Cinematheque’s Los Feliz Theatre. The lineup there adds King Vidor’s “The Patsy” (1928) and Tony Scott’s “Deja Vu” (2006). Toronto runs Nov. 17–19 at TIFF Bell Lightbox, the Fox Theatre and Paradise Cinema, with Miyake’s 2010 film “Good for Nothing” and Jacques Demy’s “Bay of Angels” (1962) on the bill.
In the new year, the tour heads to Paris, Toulouse, Rome, Turin, Madrid, Zurich, Cologne, London and Derby, and wraps in February 2027. Miyake will travel to every city except Washington.
In a joint statement, Inoue Ryo and Rokkaku Akinaru of the Japan Foundation pointed to Miyake’s own description of a director’s job as “taking on the responsibility of creating images of humanity.”
“We, too, are among the audience members who were once struck and moved by his gaze. We sincerely hope to bring that sense of wonder and emotion to as many viewers as possible in theaters around the world,” they said.
Miyake made “Playback” while still in his mid-twenties. Murakami Jun plays an actor nearing 40 who wakes up on the way to a hometown wedding wearing his old school uniform. His friend Hamaguchi Ryusuke compared the film to “a modern-day reincarnation of [John Cassavetes’s] ‘Opening Night.’”
“Small, Slow but Steady” stars Kishii Yukino and is drawn from the life of deaf boxer Ogasawara Keiko. “All the Long Nights,” adapted from Seo Maiko’s novel, pairs Matsumura Hokuto and Kamishiraishi Mone as co-workers who form a bond. “Two Seasons, Two Strangers” adapts two manga by Tsuge Yoshiharu and stars Kawai Yuumi, Takada Mansaku, Shim Eun-kyung and Tsutsumi Shinichi.