The Shape of the Wind
2025 / Japan / documentary / 76 min / dir: Kenta TANAKA
Deep in the mountains far from the urban rat race, a utopian boarding school provides a cocoon for troubled Japanese teenagers to change and grow. The filmmaker watches over closely as Minoki and Kotomi struggle with dilemmas until they finally find doorways to their respective paths.
Story
Deep in the mountains of central Japan is a chalet-styled boarding school for teenagers who had experienced some form of difficulty in the formal education system. 70 percent were previously unable to attend school regularly. Here at Tsugeno High School, the students are allowed to study and go through their days in a relaxed and unrestrained program, according to each person’s needs, based on fairness and equality. Not surprisingly though, it’s not paradise and the teachers get their share of headaches.
Meanwhile --
Kotomi struggles with mental health issues but gradually discovers performing music as a way of controlling and affirming herself.
Minoki seems restless and unfocused, but never hesitates to help others at his own expense. At parent-teacher consultations, he seems conflicted by his step-father’s expectations.
At graduation, Kotomi’s mother and Minoki’s parents look on as their children brim with a regained self-confidence and sense of direction.
This school is the filmmaker’s alma mater (2008 - 2011). After studying cinema at an arts university, he returned here to spend five years filming the day-to-day emotions of youngsters who remind him of himself.
Director’s statement
Kenta TANAKA
Japan is famous for how punctual its trains are. This reflects a society that regards diligence and adherence to rules as overruling virtues. On the other hand, you can imagine that this is a very difficult place to live if one falls outside of those rules.
Since the 1970s, the goals of school education in Japan have been to produce a population that is configured to contribute efficiently to economic development. The system emphasized academic competition and created hierarchy. Children who did not fit in turned to truancy and violence. Others refused to go to school. In the eyes of the general public, these youngsters were considered lazy and unsocial. They were devalued if they deviated or dropped out from the uniform flow of schooling in Japan.
It was against this social backdrop that several alternative education schools sprung up around the country. Tsugeno High School, the setting of this film, opened in 1995 as a citizen-run school funded by concerned people who raised about 15 million USD for its establishment. The school’s wooden building is shaped like a question mark in the intention of questioning the formal Japanese school education. The school does not conform to bureaucracy, hierarchy, or corrective education, but rather to libertarian learning based on equal human relationships, and provides a dormitory environment surrounded by nature. In this school, children are accepted as they are and given the chance to regain their self-confidence. In addition to basic learning, kickboxing and musical activities are available on their own initiative. The teenagers face who they are and learn how to relate to others.
In this film, I wanted to present these students as ordinary teenagers and free them from being labeled as misfits. They are sometimes troubled, sometimes timid, but as all youngsters, they have the courage to take one step at a time. They care about the people who love them. I believe they deserve their dignity and to be respected for who they are.
