Yuya Danzuka's 'Brand New Landscape': A Breakout Debut Intertwining Personal Anguish with Tokyo's Urban Canvas

At just 26 years old, Japanese filmmaker Yuya Danzuka has delivered a remarkably mature and intellectually assured debut feature with BRAND NEW LANDSCAPE

Premiering at the Cannes Film Festival's Directors' Fortnight, where he made history as the youngest director ever showcased in the section, Danzuka earned widespread critical acclaim for his elegant fusion of a Japanese family's emotional decay with profound meditations on Tokyo's ever-transforming urban sprawl. What many international critics may have initially overlooked, however, is that this compelling arthouse drama is also a bold and deeply personal act of autobiography.

The film opens with a summer vacation descending into quiet despair. Aspiring landscape designer Hajime (Kenichi Endo) abruptly abandons his family at their seaside retreat, claiming a career opportunity calls him back to the city. His wife, Yumiko (Haruka Igawa), shows exhausted resignation, hinting at a pattern of Hajime prioritizing art over family, signaling their marriage's terminal decline. As Hajime leaves, Yumiko falls into a depressive state, and their two children retreat into their own isolated worlds: their son with a soccer ball, their teenage daughter lost in a novel. Danzuka frames these scenes with meticulous precision, showcasing a keen eye for spatial dynamics that amplify the family's fractured state.

Fractured Lives, Evolving Cityscapes

The narrative then leaps forward a decade, revealing the family irrevocably fractured. Yumiko has passed away—her death subtly implied to be by suicide—and Hajime, having left the children years earlier for prominent projects abroad, has achieved significant acclaim. Their son, Ren (a powerfully recalcitrant Kodai Kurosaki), drifts aimlessly through Tokyo as a flower deliveryman, while his sister, Emi (Mai Kiryu), prepares to marry her longtime boyfriend, seemingly convinced that marriage offers little more than an escape from painful family history.

Their paths collide when Ren delivers flowers to an upscale gallery, only to discover his father has returned to Tokyo for a grand retrospective of his work. Hajime is also involved in a controversial redevelopment of one of Tokyo’s city parks, an ambitious project in cutting-edge urban design that necessitates the forceful displacement of a large community of unhoused individuals.

This chance reunion sparks a profound emotional reckoning. While Hajime remains emotionally detached, absorbed in his architecture and a new romance, Ren tentatively seeks reconciliation. Emi, by contrast, openly resists any notion of a family reunion. Danzuka masterfully explores emotional vacancy, not only within his characters but also through the cold, imposing cityscapes they inhabit. The camera's impassive observation of Tokyo's urban transformation serves as a powerful metaphor for the characters' own internal architecture: fragmented and alienated, yet beautiful, constantly reconfiguring in an inexpressible need to simply carry on.

Danzuka establishes himself as a formalist with an impressively deft touch, utilizing stillness, distance, and spatial tension to evoke the listlessness of modern Japanese youth and the lingering ache of familial absence.

An Unflinchingly Personal Narrative

However, what truly elevates BRAND NEW LANDSCAPE beyond a formally brilliant debut is its audacious autobiographical core, especially within a culture that highly values personal discretion.

"The characters are based on each member of my real family and the story is what we went through," Danzuka revealed ahead of the film's screening at the Shanghai International Film Festival’s Asian New Talent competition. He confirmed that his own father, celebrated landscape designer Eiki Danzuka, is widely recognized in Japan for his once-controversial, now acclaimed, redevelopment of Tokyo’s Miyashita Park—the very urban landmark ethically and aesthetically scrutinized throughout the film.

Danzuka, who grew up in Tokyo, explains his motivation: "I’ve always carried complicated feelings about Tokyo’s relentless transformation, and the way the past is constantly disappearing into the future here. When that unease around the urban landscape began to intersect with deeply personal emotions I have about my family, I realized I might be able to turn these connections into a film." He adds, "For many, the background — the city — is public, and family is private. But I grew up in Tokyo, witnessing my family change and Tokyo itself evolve simultaneously, and the feelings I experienced as both changed rapidly and beyond my control — it was all connected."

Working with Cinematographer Koichi Furuya, Danzuka meticulously crafted his distinctive observational style, emphasizing how physical spaces shape emotional experiences. "The camera’s placement was essential," he notes. "When viewing the world through the camera, the characters fill only a small area, with the city, architecture, and nature dominating the rest of the frame. By giving equal care to the spaces and surroundings as we did to the actors, we hoped to convey a sense of impartiality, which would emphasize their emotional transformations."

While Danzuka considers the film "fully non-fictional," he acknowledges the inherent subjectivity of his perspective. "My father and sister carry pain similar to mine but different," he says. "We all carry distinct feelings about what happened within our family, so it’s difficult for me to precisely say where the fiction and autobiography begin and end in my version of our story."

In a testament to the evolving nature of their relationship, Danzuka, who had been estranged from his father for a period, shared the screenplay with him prior to filming and received his blessing. His father first saw the completed film at its Cannes premiere, a moment Danzuka describes as very emotional for him. "Our relationship continues to evolve, like the characters," Danzuka reflects. "The film is about evolution, emotions tied to landscapes, respect for past generations’ memories, and the cycle of things vanishing and new things emerging."

He concludes by highlighting the profound personal impact of the project: "Before making this film, I hadn’t thought deeply about landscapes and spaces. It has deepened my appreciation for my father’s work — and I think he has gained a greater respect for filmmaking, too."