Welcome to the Portland Film Festival 2014 Schedule. Also on Facebook, Twitter, Meetup and Instagram. Use #PDXFF14 in your posts, so we can follow your festival experience. Don’t miss Opening Night and the RED CARPET on Tuesday August 26th at CRYSTAL BALLROOM. SEX ED - A new teacher quickly finds that his highly pubescent pupils are receiving no form of sex ed. He wants to teach them – but he’s not exactly “experienced.” [MORE]
Standing out like one very sore thumb in Tokyo's social landscape of relentless cheer and politeness, Kumiko (Rinko Kikuchi, all grown up from the deaf-mute teenager of Babel) is a true misfit and a blatant weirdo alongside the interchangeable perky girls with whom she shares generic office work. Kumiko has a secret obsession: She's found a videotape, and on it is evidence of a buried fortune. Never mind that said videotape is a ragged VHS dupe of the Coen brothers' classic Fargo. With a true believer's fervor, Kumiko will get herself to the impossibly distant, exotic land of North Dakota—barriers of language, money, sufficient winter clothing and reality be damned. Her quest is as pure as it is, seemingly, insane. This is a frequently wordless road trip narrative, with the Zellner brothers' absurdist humor boiled down to exquisite minimalism. It's peopled with characters whose warmth is only heightened by Kumiko's impenetrable oddity. The result requires patience, but rewards with droll enchantment. Not the least of its pleasures are Sean Porter's widescreen photography and an original score by the Octopus Project.
CAST & CREW CAST: Rinko Kikuchi, Nobuyuki Katsube, David Zellner, Nathan Zellner, Shirley Venard DIRECTOR: David Zellner PRODUCERS: Nathan Zellner, Cameron Lamb, Chris Ohlson, Andrew Banks, Jim Burke
