August in the Water

Ratings & Reviews

Jordan Kaltz

still so engrossing despite my broken download

Markus Baumknecht

The way the strangeness of everything is captured is breathtaking. Japan is a perfect backdrop for the sterile surrealism of this film. The soundtrack is truly special - so subtle and yet all the more wonderful.

dalena

i swim through compounds of myself and i carry the working junctions of the universe in the cartridges of memory that quench me. sunken images from our ancient sky threading together a reality shape-shifting like sand collapsing towards a puncture of the earth.

Anthony De Luca

I love a Japanese film set in the summer. You can really feel that heat beating down on you.

TheCentralRuhr

Ideas of new age mysticism and science-fiction are treated with such reverence that Ishii transcends their generic limitations. A sublime, ineffable experience.

matelot

3.5

Juan D.

Surely one of the best scenes of "caracther acknowledge its new superpowers" i had ever seen in any media..

C҉ă҉t҉ă҉l҉i҉n҉

Even maps can encourage solipsism, prescribing users to ignore them and find their own way. The more they walk and look around the more they’re drawing out new webs of associations between fragments that liquefact under the melting charm of canicular paralipomena: How can all things be distributed, dispersed? How can they communicate in a state of constantly being ripped apart and rearranged, but without completely ↓

kartina obskura

ishii might have films with plot-flaws but who cares when he creates other worlds. flow, fly, sink, immerse, float, forget. then hug the stone.

Ostermyers

Ishii is still thiking beyond with punk or some metaphysical stuff !

Arisu

my kind of aesthetic

Ciprian David

And end-of-century and fresh start film. abounding in occultism i cannot cope with. As I wrote in a recent Text on Ishii, the swimmers and their diving plattform as a temple for diving as a sacred movement were my favorite parts.

Viktor Pedersen

"August in the Water" often moves into the realms of the indescribable. Creating a state/ sensation where words and analysis is pointless, leaving an deeper feeling of relation to nature and how to appreciate each other while we are still here. Rarely does sound and image join together in such a perfect symbiosis of evocative power. Spiritual and definitely unique.

nrh

A deeply strange film, even from the eccentric Ishii. Working without even the trace amounts of thriller mechanics found in "Labyrinth of Dreams" and "Angel Dust," he relies here almost entirely on hypnotic, associative image work... Be warned - this film does include pre-Millennial new-ageisms, including talk of UFOs, astrology, and psychic communication with dolphins.