Edinburgh International Film Festival 2012: Spotlight on Shinya Tsukamoto

Film has always explored that perennial human worry of being just another cog in the works, a tool in somebody else’s kit, of becoming a machine. This is true even today, in a world where we’re all transistors soldered into the circuit board of social networking. Fear of impending dehumanisation is a recurring theme in the films of seminal cult auteur, Shinya Tsukamoto. EIFF’s mini showcase features his breakthrough film, Tetsuo: The Iron Man – a monochrome classic of Japanese cyberpunk – and its sequel Tetsuo II: Body Hammer. Also featuring is the UK première of Tsukamoto’s most recent film, the critically acclaimed Kotoko, which follows a psychologically unstable mother as she descends into psychosis. With an unmistakable aesthetic and vision often compared to the likes of David Lynch and David Cronenberg, Spotlight on Shinya Tsukamoto is an ideal introduction to this director’s surreal, dystopian world.