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Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes

Goofy, heartwarming Japanese sci-fi

Dir: Junta Yamaguchi, 2020, Japan, 70 mins, cert: 12

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Thu 22 June 2023 // 19:30 / Cinema

Tickets: £7/5/3/free

'A masterpiece of filmmaking packed with joy' -- Shinichirou Ueda, director of One Cut of the Dead

In this endearing time-travel comedy, a morose café owner finds that his computer monitor shows exactly two minutes into the future, while another monitor in the cafe shows two minutes into the past. Eager to exploit the mysterious powers of the 'Time TV',  his friends attempt to create a loop with the two screens, letting them extend the time gap and glimpse farther ahead into the future. Naturally, things get out of hand. 

Junta Yamaguchi's directorial debut plays with staples of the time-travel genre - paradoxes, self-fulfilling prophecies, and future-knowledge as profitable resource, to name a few - but offers a lighthearted and fresh approach to weighty philosophical themes. Further playing with themes of time and space, Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes is staged and shot in a staggeringly precise 'one take' style, allowing the running joke of seeing characters interacting with themselves on both sides of the screen in real time, as they replay the same conversations they just had two minutes ago. A true gem of creative, low-budget indie filmmaking!