Films at the Embassy of Japan: Rail Truck(トロッコ)

With the ashes of their late father, Atsushi, Toki and their mother travel from Tokyo to a mountain village in the south of Taiwan. Having been raised in the big city, the boys are wide-eyed at the verdant rural scenery. And waiting for them is a Taiwanese grandfather who speaks Japanese. Atsushi, strongly conscious that in ethnocentric Japan he is ‘different’, is in a state of rebellion against both the society in which he has grown up and his mother. In the home of their grandparents, who have lived through vast changes in the political landscape and the values that prevail in society, the family rediscovers the bonds that unite it. Based on a short novel by Ryunosuke Akutagawa and reconstructed in Taiwan, this film is a human drama describing lyrically the young brothers’ adventure and their growth in the summer.