Kanna (Mayu Matsuoka, left) and Haseo (Ryo Narita) are college friends who reconnect and go on a dayslong journey in Yukiko Mishima’s “Two Cigarettes, Three Nights.” | © 2026 “OTOKO TOMODACHI” FILM PARTNERS
Oct 20, 2026
In Akane Chihaya’s 2014 novel “Otoko Tomodachi” (“Male Friend”), Haseo asks Kanna a question: “What would you do the day the world ends?”
The question took on a different meaning for filmmaker Yukiko Mishima when she read the novel in 2020. She had recently released her film “Shape of Red” and was preparing to shoot a new project when the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered theaters and brought production to a halt.
“That line originally had a kind of fable-like quality to it,” Mishima says. “But in 2020 … it stopped feeling like a fable. It felt like something that could genuinely happen at any moment.”
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Source: The Japan Times · Sebastien Raineri
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