Nostalgia is Takashi Miike’s favorite film of his considerable body of work. Including biographical elements, Nostalgia centers around the home and school of a young boy, whose family mix the violent and dysfunctional with the comic and the loveable. Though containing elements of the sudden and shocking brutality that many associate with this director, Young Thugs – Nostalgia is more concerned with a child’s moment of leaving the internalized world of fantasy, and passing on eagerly to the next stage of life. A wonderful, touching, startling vision that is uniquely Miike’s.

After his daughter Mai is killed in an auto accident, a genius programmer recreates her in the form of a computer program called AI. His jealous brother-in-law, wanting to get his hands on the technology for profit, sends his client to steal it and Mai’s father is killed in the process. Learning of her capture, Mai’s old friends race to free AI from her captors so that she won’t fall into the corporate clutches that threaten to erase her soul.