Hijacked Youth – Dare to Stop Us 2

This is not the first time that the life of the notorious film director Koji Wakamatsu has been at the centre of a biopic feature film. The master, who died a few years ago and knew like no other how to combine left-wing radical and trendy revolutionary fantasies with sexploitation and excessive violence, was already the focus of benevolent revisionist hindsight in Dare To Stop Us (Japannual 2019). In this loose sequel, we see Wakamatsu as a promoter of cinema culture and young filmmaking. Not without selfish ulterior motives, he appoints the film programmer Kimita as head of his newly founded arthouse cinema project Cinema Skhole. First and foremost, of course, Wakamatsu films are to be shown there, not least because conservative Japan now refuses to show his films. The fact that his commercial success is rather limited as a result doesn't bother him much at first, but later, much to the chagrin of cineastes, he fully commits to the programming of Pink Pictures, ‘Sex Sells’ then probably also applies to free radicals. Wakamatsu applies the principle of simultaneous support and exploitation here just as he did before, especially when an idealistic young film student offers to direct a film produced by Wakamatsu. His name is Junichi Inoue.

Director and screenwriter Junichi INOUE (who also wrote the book for Dare To Stop Us) films his own story here and creates a highly amusing memorial to his master Wakamatsu. Arata IURA's portrayal is once again deliciously exaggerated. Iura has already acted for KORE-EDA (After Life, 1998 or Air Doll, 2009) or Naomi KAWASE (True Mothers, 2020), but also for Wakamtsu himself (United Red Army, 2007 or Caterpillar, 2010). The cinema manager Kimita is played by Masahiro HIGASHIDE. He is a regular actor in films by Kyoshi KUROSAWA (Wife Of A Spy, 2020 or Creepy, 2016), but has also appeared for Ryūsuke HAMAGUCHI in Asako I&II. At Japannual, he impressed in the lead role of The Sound of Grass in 2021.