“Sunset Sunrise” (サンセット・サンライズ) is a warm, crowd‑pleasing pandemic‑era dramedy that uses a familiar “city boy in the countryside” setup to explore grief, community, and rural revitalisation, all wrapped in a gentle romcom tone.
Story of “Sunset Sunrise”
The film is set in early 2020, when COVID-19 precautions like masks, temperature checks, and constant sanitising are reshaping daily life in Japan. Tokyo salaryman and avid fishing fan Shinsaku Nishio (Masaki Suda) seizes the new flexibility of remote work to escape cramped city life and move to Minamisanriku on the Sanriku Coast of Miyagi Prefecture, a town deeply scarred by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. There he finds an almost impossibly cheap dream home—a spacious 4LDK near the sea for 60,000 yen a month—and rents it from Momoka Sekino (Mao Inoue), a civil servant whose own life has been shaped by loss.
At first, Shinsaku’s sunny Tokyo energy clashes with a tight‑knit community that is wary of outsiders and still processing disaster trauma. Through fishing trips, shared meals of fresh sashimi, and day‑to‑day encounters with a cast of quirky locals, he gradually earns their trust, turning what was meant to be a “trial move” into a deeper journey of belonging and self‑discovery.
Themes
Despite being set at the paranoid peak of the pandemic, the film leans into optimism, finding humour in awkward social distancing, disinfectant rituals, and misunderstandings between city and country, rather than dwelling on fear. Beneath the romcom surface, it engages with heavier issues: the lingering wounds of the 2011 disaster, Japan’s rural depopulation, the empty‑house problem, and the tension between urban opportunity and regional decline. The emotional core is the evolving relationship between Shinsaku and Momoka, whose guardedness
Performances and craft
Masaki Suda plays against some of his darker, more eccentric roles, offering a relaxed, open, and quietly funny take on Shinsaku that anchors the film’s warmth. Mao Inoue brings nuance and steel to Momoka, tracing a believable arc from prickly suspicion to fragile openness without ever turning her into a simple love-interest stereotype. The supporting ensemble of locals—including characters played by veteran actors like Fumiyo Kohinata and Beat Kiyoshi—adds colour and humour, with several critics highlighting emotionally charged scenes in which bottled‑up feelings finally spill over.
Director Yoshiyuki Kishi, known for the more intense “Seiyoku,” shifts gears into a gentler register here, while still bringing a documentarian’s eye to small-town routines and landscapes.
Release info
“Sunset Sunrise” is positioned as a 2025 Japanese feature film distributed internationally on the festival circuit. It opened in Japan in January 2025 and has since screened at festivals and special programs in places like Malaysia’s Japanese Film Festival 2025, Palace Cinemas’ Japanese Film Festival in Australia, and the Japanese Film Festival in India, often marketed as a food‑ and community‑themed romcom.
Early audience reactions on Japanese platforms describe it as a “comforting” film and leaves viewers with a warm, hopeful aftertaste and a renewed appreciation for Tōhoku’s people and scenery.
Where to watch Sunset Sunrise (2025)
