Short films

TOKYO STORIES / TOKYO GREAT WALL

In a near-future Tokyo, the city is sealed off by a massive wall under a law restricting population influx. Ten years later, Eiji, a 17-year-old who dreams of becoming a musician, makes his way along the wall, searching for a way inside.

In the mountains, he meets an old man who tells him of a hidden passage. At a deserted roadside ramen shop, Eiji is given a red-wrapped charm and led to a concealed path beneath a well. There, he encounters Ami, a girl trying to leave the city to see her dying grandfather.

As their opposing desires collide, the charms in their hands begin to resonate, triggering a force that brings the wall down.

At dawn, the two awaken to a Tokyo no longer divided. Eiji steps toward the city, while Ami heads for the world beyond.

AiVE / 0:10:00 / Japan / Fantasy / 2026

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TOKYO STORIES / TOKYO Robo

Tokyo where reality and delusion intertwine.
“I” am a robot, controlled by “you,” my creator, wandering endlessly through a rusted shopping street.

Even as my companions are one by one reduced to scrap, I simply long for your command to say “go.”
Creation and destruction repeat themselves. A life that is only discarded and rebuilt again and again.

Within this endless loop, she continues to gaze at “you” until the very end, trying to prove a distorted form of love.
To break is not the end—it is merely the ritual of an everyday life covered in rust, for the creation of a new me once again.

Takeshi Nakamura / 0:05:17 / Japan / Video Art / 2026

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TOKYO STORIES / TOKYO SONEZAKICITY

This project explores the connection between traditional Bunraku and contemporary forms of expression. Originating in the Edo period, Bunraku developed through the refinement of playwright Chikamatsu Monzaemon, narrator Takemoto Gidayū, and producer Uemura Bunrakuken. The tayū, who narrates the story and dialogue, can be seen as the rappers of their time, while shamisen players functioned like track makers.

Hip-hop is rooted in sampling, and AI can also be understood as a new form of sampling-based expression. From this perspective, using AI to reinterpret Bunraku in a contemporary form becomes a natural extension.

This work presents a reinterpretation of two acts from Chikamatsu’s The Love Suicides at Sonezaki, arranged in a hip-hop style featuring Ohatsu, Tokubei, and Kuheiji. The lyrics were generated with ChatGPT and composed using SUNO, while the visuals were created with DALL·E and further developed into video using MidJourney and VEO3.

sano yutaka / 00:03:18 / Japan / Music Video / 2026

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TOKYO STORIES / TOKYO ECHO

Tokyo Echo is a visual work constructed from the real words left behind by young people on the internet.

Within social media posts, comment sections, and short-form messages, there exist countless fragments of raw emotion directed toward Tokyo—such as expectation, admiration, anxiety, and discomfort—regardless of whether the speakers have actually experienced the city or not.

This work uses such extracted, real emotional data and language gathered from online networks as its foundation. Based on this material, it constructs the imagined presence of fictional young individuals—bodies, voices, and gazes brought into visual form.

Real words and unreal beings.
Record and creation.
Anonymity and embodiment.

By placing and layering these elements against each other, the work portrays Tokyo not simply as a physical location, but as a collective image formed within the inner worlds of individuals.

No clear narrative or conclusion is presented. Instead, what emerges is an “echo”—a fleeting resonance in which voices once buried deep within the internet briefly surface, resonating with the city’s light and silence.

Tokyo Echo is an attempt to quietly yet distinctly visualize the emotions that young people of this era project onto Tokyo, traversing the boundaries between reality and fiction, online and offline.

Masaaki Uchino / 0:05:01 / Japan / Non-Fiction / 2026

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TOKYO STORIES / TOKYO LIMINAL

An AI-driven short film set in a hidden side of Tokyo where ancient yokai still live. Through interview-style encounters, they watch modern city life from the edge—rivers changed beyond recognition, identities always shifting, futures turned into notifications, nights lost to artificial light, and a society focused on size and control.

Rather than directly judging the present, the film uses old stories to look at it in a new way. It shows how familiar parts of modern life can feel strange, even unsettling, when seen over a long history.

Shingo Hashimoto / 0:05:01 / Japan / Fantasy / 2026

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TOKYO STORIES / TOKYO after prompt

This film was created through an attempt to make images in dialogue with AI. When asked to describe Tokyo, the AI returned familiar, idealized cityscapes. This sense of mismatch led to the use of renga, a traditional Japanese poetic form, not as control but as response.

Renga alternates 5-7-5 and 7-7 verse lines, where each line responds to the previous one with a slight shift, creating unexpected changes. In this work, this structure was used as the basis for dialogue with AI.

The visual material comes from forgotten recordings of Tokyo shot on the director’s old iPhone. These images were used as first frames for video generation, making visible the shifts between recorded reality and generated imagery.

What emerges is a city that feels neither hopeful nor bleak, but bright and white, suspended in between. After Prompt is a film that looks at what remains after a command is given—not the prompt itself, but the space that follows the response.

Suzuko Ohgaki / 0:03:46 / Japan / Drama / 2026

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TOKYO STORIES / RE：FACELESS

Toshiki Aoki / 0:03:27 / Japan / Drama / 2026

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TOKYO STORIES / TOKYO ЯƎTЯOGR∀DƎ

A flooded Tokyo where thought becomes reality, and AI traces post-human memory and transformation. Created entirely with generative AI, including local LLMs, the film depicts a submerged city, the cultivation of “HUMAN.2,” and the erasure of memory—forming a sci-fi world beyond live action and traditional CGI. Across four minutes, it builds an AI-specific visual language of strange textures and quiet, absurd beauty.

Minoru Kusakabe / 0:04:01 / Japan / Drama / 2026

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TOKYO STORIES / TOKYO Rouge

Dual Passions, Ephemeral Couture

A vivid double standard hacking the streets of Tokyo.

At a bustling, popular ramen shop, a man in his 20s from the LGBTQ community navigates the city’s rush with striking ease. Immersed in the heat of a demanding daily life, his unguarded presence embodies the raw reality of the metropolis. Yet when the city is painted in deep indigo and neon lights begin to breathe, he puts on a “midnight masquerade,” transforming dramatically into a beautiful drag queen in order to access a hidden, underground realm.

What AI weaves is a form of digital couture that transcends live action—sculptural makeup, architectural wigs, and luxurious dresses worn by a drag queen figure. To a melancholic melody blending Japanese and French, he dances with an ethereal grace.

However, this overwhelming beauty is nothing more than a “crimson afterimage” that disappears with the break of dawn. Through a “crimson illusion” painted by the magic of AI, this work vividly portrays an ephemeral identity suspended between two passions.

Miho Kinomura / 0:05:16 / Japan / Fantasy / 2026

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TOKYO STORIES / TOKYO Vortex

“Why do we gather here?”
This short visual poem is based on the director’s personal experience of moving from Gifu to Tokyo, exploring the city’s pull and the sense of alienation it creates. The journey from the countryside to Tokyo is not only a physical shift, but a process in which individual presence is drawn into a larger vortex.
People gather in this uncomfortable space and gradually become part of a standardized mass. Within this, the film captures a sense of solitude and an instinctive resistance to the city’s systems, expressed through a wordless, surreal approach.

Mai Nonomura / 00:03:50 / Japan / Fantasy / 2026

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