Mermaid Legend

Migiwa and Keisuke form a couple of oyster fishermen, living in a country port at the dawn of profound upheavals: the construction of an amusement park is announced. One night, while Keisuke, the husband, smokes his spleen on board his boat, he witnesses a murder on the open sea; a few days later, it is his body that is perforated and it is up to Migiwa, the diver with a mermaid's destiny, to seek justice by embodying the rage of a society shattered on the altar of contempt, concrete, and nuclear power. Two years after the Offscreen 2024 programming around the Director's Company and Hasegawa Kazuhiko, here is finally the first feature film produced by the Director's Company and blocked at the time by rights issues. In "Mermaid Legend", Ikeda Toshiaru, the director, combines this intimate and social drama with the codes of genre film – bloodshed, unhealthy eroticism, and a breathtaking final scene — to underline all the dread and anger of seeing traditions irremediably attacked by insolent industrial projects, whether they take the form of a theme park or, more certainly, a nuclear power plant.