The Land of Hope

Sion Sono (園 子温 Sono Shion, born 1961) is a controversial filmmaker and poet. He was born in Toyokawa, Aichi, Japan and is best known for his movies and avant-garde poetry performances.

After receiving a fellowship with the PIA, Sono made his first feature-length 16 mm film in 1990, Bicycle Sighs (Jitensha Toiki), which he co-wrote, directed, and starred himself. A coming-of-age tale about two underachievers in the perfectionist Japan, Bicycle Sighs settled Sono as a director with great box office success in Japan, and for nearly two years was played over 30 film festivals around Europe and Asia. In 1992, Sono’s second feature film The Room (Heya), also written by himself, a bizarre tale about a serial killer looking for a room in a bleak, doomed Tokyo district, participated at the Tokyo Sundance Film Festival and won the Special Jury Prize. The Room also toured on 49 festivals worldwide, including the Berlin Film Festival and the Rotterdam Film Festival.

At this stage Sono appeared as an actor in the movie I Hate You… Not (Kirai… Janaiyo), and in 1994 caught the attention of the acclaimed French directors Jean-Jacques Beineix and Jackie Bastide, who used footage of Sion Sono’s poetry group and interviewed him for their famous documentary Otaku, about the otaku lifestyle and post-modernism in Japan. However, Sono appeared as the opposite of an otaku—the footage used was of him and his group in street performances and outgoing activities. Otaku was a success and made Sono gain fame as both a poet and prominent figure in Japanese independent filmmaking.

Sion Sono also continued to direct and write various films such as Keiko Desukedo (a film about the lonely life of a waitress) in 1997 and the 26-min short Kaze (Wind) in 1998.

In 2001, Sion Sono wrote, directed, shot in the record time of two weeks (and assembled in four) what would later become his most successful movie to date: Suicide Circle, (Jisatsu Saakuru), a disturbing thriller about Japan’s incredibly high suicide rate. The film once again starred Sono’s friends Masatoshi Nagase (from 0cm4) and Maro Akaji (from Utsumishi), along with big stars such as Ryo Ishibashi and Rolly, although using for its most unknown actors such as Saya Hagiwara. Suicide Circle became a major commercial hit in Japan and was also played in many film festivals, where it was retitled Suicide Club (school clubs in Japan are called サークル this is a literal translation). It won the Groundbreaker Award and the Most Groundbreaking Film jury prize at the Fant-Asia Film Festival.

Suicide Circle’s opening scene, shocking and extreme, made it famous around the independent horror fanbase, becoming a cult movie, and as a result it was the first Sion Sono movie to get an official DVD release in the West. This made him a popular director in the J-Horror English-speaking community, who began looking forward to his films, as Sono stated that Suicide Circle would be a part of a trilogy.

After the huge success that Suicide Circle represented in Sono’s career as a filmmaker, he decided to improve his fame as a writer and released a novel titled Jisatsu Saakuru: Kanzenban (Suicide Circle: The Complete Edition), which served as a side-story and sequel to the movie. He also worked with mangaka Usumaru Furuya and released the Suicide Circle manga, which was a completely different story, as Sono requested Furuya. He also released various films such as Chichi no Nichi and HAZARD, starring once again Saya Hagiwara.

2005 was a major year in Sion Sono’s career. He wrote and directed Into a Dream (Yume no Naka e), which also released as a novel later on, and was a coming-of-age tale much in the style of his first film Bicycle Sighs, about the life of a theatre group member and his quest to find who he is. Few weeks after that, he released the Suicide Circle‘s second part, based on the Kanzenban novel. _Noriko’s Dinner Table_ was also directed and written by him, and was part of twelve film festivals worldwide. For this movie he worked with many first-time actors, and took the Suicide Circle story into a different level. For his efforts, he received a Don Quijote Award and a Special Mention at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival.

At the end of 2005, Sion Sono also premiered a personal project with famous actor Ishida Issei and the legendary actress Miyazaki Masumi, in what became her acclaimed comeback after a decade off the screen. Strange Circus (Kimyô na Sâkasu), directed, written, composed and cinematographed by Sono, took elements from the infamous Grand Guignol theater and a story from the minds of both Masumi and Sono, filled with incest, sexual abuse, terrible family issues, extreme gore, and a twisted sense of reality. The film participated in many film festivals with a huge success, boosting Masumi’s and Sono’s career.

In 2008, he was the director and writer of the popular Love Exposure, winning a lot of awards and goods reviews in the diverses film festivals around the world. –Wikipedia