WADACHI

On the WAIFF Kyoto award page, WADACHI begins with a young Japanese woman in an old one-story house. She wakes to what should be an ordinary morning, but an unsettling wrongness gradually takes hold.

The jury highlights the unease of a repeated morning, allowing fear to grow without over-explaining the premise. At its emotional core is the desire to protect someone close; restrained sound, pauses and the weight of time turn the genre setup into a story about memory and letting go.