Single8 (2023)

Inspired by the director's own youth, Single 8 follows a group of high schoolers who make a low-budget sci-fi film in the wake of Star Wars. This making of the movie... is basically the movie, but what it lacks in narrative, it makes up for with spirit. These kids are learning filmmaking on the fly. Their product is rough (though certainly better than it has right to be) but it's a labor of love. Ultimately, it succeeds, only because the kids succeed, and that it exists at all is the real triumph.

The actual movie itself has a similar conceit: though it has none of the gloss, nor the budget, nor the star power, nor the grand ambition, it doesn't matter. It's a movie people wanted to make, and they made it. Director Konaka Kazuya, a veteran in tokusatsu, reminisces a time in his life when filmmaking was all about the desire to create and to collaborate. The final cut? A happy accident. The real movie is the friends we made along the way.

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