A silent revolutionary and a decades-long run
Sneak Preview Screening: "ESCAPE" (Toso) followed by a Q&A with
director Masao Adachi and actor Kanji Furutachi
Tuesday, February 25 at 6:00 pm*
*Please note early start time.
In Japanese with English subtitles
Japan 2025 114 minutes
Written and directed by: Masao Adachi
Executive Producer: Yu Hirano
Supervising Producer: Sanshiro Kobayashi
Starring: Kanji Furutachi, Rairu Sugita, Soran Tamoto, Mutsuo Yoshioka,
Yuya Matsuura, Yohta Kawase, Tomomitsu Adachi, Eriko Nakamura
Film courtesy of Uzumasa
If you live in Japan, you've surely noticed the Wanted posters hanging on bulletin boards at police kobans around the country. You may even have noticed the photo of Satoshi Kirishima. It showed a young man with long hair, thick glasses and an incongruously carefree smile. Kirishima's mugshot spent nearly five decades at Japanese kobans, before a man claiming to be him was hospitalized with stomach cancer in January 2024, and died before his story could be verified.
As the details were still emerging, legendary auteur Masao Adachi, a former fugitive from justice himself, began prepping his latest film, which he eventually called "Escape." The subject? Satoshi Kirishima and his decades on the run as a silent revolutionary.
In this fact-based work, young Kirishima (Sugita) has been declared a terrorist for his membership in the Scorpion cell, one of three militant groups that are part of the East Asia Anti-Japanese Armed Front (EAAJAF). The main cell has launched a bombing campaign against Japan for its past colonial crimes and the continued exploitation of Asians, beginning with Ainu and Koreans. A 1974 bombing of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries headquarters results in the deaths of eight people and 380 injured, and the three factions split. But the attacks continue into 1975. When the police start rounding up members in 1975, Kirishima is one of several Scorpion members who evade capture.
Working day jobs, unable to forge friendships or to settle down, "Hiroshi Uchida" eventually joins a construction company and grows uneasily into middle age, haunted constantly by the images of his former friends, some of whom fled the country to avoid lengthy prison sentences, while others chose cyanide pills before they could be interrogated. As his health begins to fail, Uchida/Kirishima (Furutachi) remains committed to a cause he barely seems to understand, consumed by self-doubt and constantly arguing with himself - there is no one else to talk to - about the proper path of struggle and his overwhelming feeling of powerlessness.
Please join us for this sneak preview of Masao Adachi’s provocative, politically charged "Escape," before the film’s Japan release on March 15.
For more (in Japanese): https://kirishima-tousou.com/
Writer-director MASAO ADACHI has been creating activist art for nearly 60 years. After studying film at Nihon University, he collaborated with Nagisa Oshima and Koji Wakamatsu on political and pink films in the 1960s. In 1971, he and Wakamatsu co-directed "Red Army/PFLP: Declaration of World War," after which Adachi spent 27 years living in Lebanon as a member of the Japanese Red Army. He was deported back to Japan in 2000, and soon resumed his filmmaking career. He released "Prisoner/Terrorist" (2007) and "Artist of Fasting" (2016). He last appeared at FCCJ in 2022 with "Revolution+1," about the alleged killer of former prime minister Abe Shinzo in 2022.
Actor KANJI FURUTACHI began his career as a stage actor, and studied at the famed HB Studio in New York with Uta Hagen and Carol Rosenfeld before returning to Japan, where he soon expanded into film and television. Highlights of his film work include "My Back Page" (2010), which marked his first visit to FCCJ, "Hospitalité" (2010) - which won the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival and brought him greater international fame - "Au revoir l’eté" (2013), "Lowlife Love" (2016), "Too Young to Die!" (2016), "Harmonium" (2016), "The Journalist" (2019), "The Voice of Sin" (2020), "One Summer Story" (2021), "Annette" (2022, directed by Leos Carax), and "Blind Willow" (2024, Pierre Földes). He’ll soon be seen in "Ravens" (2025, Mark Gill).
Please make your reservations at the FCCJ Reception Desk 03 3211-3161 or from event page.
All film screenings are private, noncommercial events primarily for FCCJ members and their guests.
- Karen Severns, Film Committee