A brand new 4K restoration of one of Japan’s greatest films!

Sharing a loose affinity with The Breakfast Club (as the title hints) this classic drama is far more understated than its US counterpart. Typhoon Club is widely regarded as the seminal film of director Shinji Somai’s career.

A work of raw, elemental power, it follows an ensemble of junior high students in rural Japan, beset by a summer-y malaise as a typhoon looms. When the storm makes landfall, the teens find themselves holed up in their school unsupervised, while another classmate (Yuki Kudo) disappears alone on a harrowing trek to the big city. Set adrift in a world suddenly unmoored, the students let loose their pent-up angst and burgeoning passions in a series of propulsive, phantasmic scenes—part apocalypse, part utopia—as the deluge rages on into the night.

Observed in daring long takes, director Somai gives material form to the students’ turbulent inner lives. When day breaks and the rains let up, the youngsters open their eyes to a world in ruins—or a world renewed.

The 10th best Japanese film of all time, according to Japan’s Kinema Junpo poll, Typhoon Club would notably win Best Film at the inaugural Tokyo International Film Festival, where Academy Award-winning director Bernardo Bertolucci (The Last Emperor) called it “one of the most beautiful and touching teenage films I’ve ever seen”. 

Winner of the Grand Prix at the first Tokyo International Film Festival in 1985, 

Part of a series of film screenings celebrating the Directors Company – The legendary 1980s indie Japanese production company, which between 1982 and 1992 became a home for the country’s young, emerging filmmakers.

With thanks to Third Window Films for this new digital restoration.