Locarno Winner Sho Miyake Gets First North American Retrospective

By Elena Vasquez

Sho Miyake, whose "Two Seasons, Two Strangers" won the Golden Leopard at Locarno in 2025, will receive his first North American retrospective at New York's Metrograph from Nov. 7 to 17. The series, titled "Unspoken Gestures: The Films of Sho Miyake," is co-organized and presented by the Japan Foundation and forms one stop on a 14-city tour spanning eight countries.

Miyake will attend the opening weekend in person. Select encore screenings follow the main run.

What's on the Metrograph program?

The retrospective assembles eight of Miyake's own titles:

• "Playback" (2012), his debut feature, which premiered at Locarno
• "The Cockpit" (2014), a 64-minute film following producer-rapper OMSB and collaborator Bim making a track in a small suburban Tokyo apartment
• "And Your Bird Can Sing" (2018), paired with the 2016 short "August 8th"
• "Two Seasons, Two Strangers," paired with the 2016 short "Nagahama"
• "Small, Slow but Steady" (2022) and "All the Long Nights" (2024)

Miyake also selected two carte blanche influences: 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. Q&As follow "Small, Slow but Steady" and "Two Seasons, Two Strangers" on Nov. 7.

Metrograph programmer Edo Choi framed the stakes in a statement. "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," Choi said.

Where else does the tour stop?

The tour opens Nov. 3 in Washington, D.C., where the Japan Information & Culture Center at the Embassy of Japan will screen "Two Seasons, Two Strangers," with Miyake joining the Q&A remotely. Oklahoma follows Nov. 9-11, with screenings at the University of Oklahoma's Meacham Auditorium in Norman and the Oklahoma City Museum of Art, plus a masterclass for a university screenwriting class 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. That lineup 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 continues to Paris, Toulouse, Rome, Turin, Madrid, Zurich, Cologne, London and Derby, wrapping in February 2027. Miyake will travel to every city except Washington.

Why does the Japan Foundation back the series?

In a joint statement, Inoue Ryo and Rokkaku Akinaru of the Japan Foundation cited Miyake's own description of a director's job as "taking on the responsibility of creating images of humanity." They added: "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."

What are the films about?

Miyake made "Playback" 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. Miyake's 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 draws on 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.

By the time the tour closes in February 2027, Miyake's Locarno-winning cinema will have reached audiences on three continents — a scale of exposure the director has never had in North America.