Cannibals

During the hot, dry summer of 1988, in a forgotten neighborhood known as ‘the riverside’, seventeen-year-old Shinogaki Toma is entangled in a desperate struggle against what he believes to be his fate to become his violent, sexually sadistic father. Consumed by a fear that he will harm his girlfriend during sex, Toma’s downward spiral into depression and instability becomes increasingly intense. Toma’s mother left his father long ago and now lives nearby as a fishmonger. Using the hook that replaced the hand she lost during wartime bombings, she guts the eels Toma catches in the sewagefilled river for his father to eat. Things come to head when Kotoko, his father’s live-in girlfriend, becomes pregnant and makes the decision to leave the riverside for a better life.