‘The Longing’ review: Toshizo Fujiwara directs and stars in sweet Panorama drama

Dir: Toshizo Fujiwara. Japan. 2025. 104mins

This endearingly heartfelt, low-budget Japanese drama deals with the oldest of stories: a young guy who went off the rails but, after a spell behind bars, is determined to go straight – if only he can keep his demons and his old hell-raising buddies at bay. It takes a while, at first, to get past the rather murky handheld camerawork and on-the-nose dialogue (“I want a chance to start over. I’ll get rid of my tattoos!”). But gradually, The Longing’s story of human frailty and goodness really gets under the skin. Further festival play looks likely following its Berlin Panorama premiere and, further afield, it could be just the kind of underdog release to be boosted by social media and word-of-mouth recommendations.

A film that is very much about what is unsaid

This was a seemingly a personal project for director Toshizo Fujiwara, an actor who has also served for many years as a volunteer probation officer (there are almost 50,000 of these ‘hogoshi’ in Japan, who work closely with professional probation officers to rehabilitate the offenders assigned to them). Fujiwara plays Hiroyuki, the owner of an Osaka restaurant that specialises in okonomiyaki – a type of savory pancake. He has offered a job to young offender Yuto (Daiki Ido), once part of a hell-raising motorbike gang, now apparently sincere in his desire to keep out of trouble and learn a trade.

In a seemingly unconnected plot strand, Hiroyuki’s wife Sonoko has just suffered a miscarriage. Though it’s never stated in a film that is very much about what is left unsaid, she clearly draws a parallel between her husband’s ‘adoption’ of this young tearabout and his lack of enthusiasm for the couple’s continued fertility treatment. Anonymous neighbours, meanwhile, keep posting angry messages on the restaurant’s shutters overnight, accusing Hiroyuki of rewarding criminals and hooligans for their bad behaviour by giving them jobs.

Hiroyuki encourages Yuto to visit his estranged parents but, when the trainee chef gets to the family apartment, he discovers they have moved without telling him. Yuto lets himself go, has a night on the town with one of his old motorcycle buddies, meets a girl and almost loses his job, but is given another chance by the patient Hiroyuki. Slowly, we see causal connections forming into something more. An old man that Yuko delivers okoyonomaki to – once rich, now fallen on hard times – suddenly dies, but new life is on the way, and it’s kindness, patience and loyalty that keeping things moving forward.

Editing is a key element here: it’s almost casual, with sometimes abrupt leaps between storylines, but the effect is to create parallels and convergences. When Sonoko recounts to a work colleague the imagined life of her lost baby, and Yuto writes a letter to the girl he refuses to give up on, a big emotional arc breaks like a wave we never saw coming. Not much else is needed, except for a reticent, classically infused soundtrack of minor-key piano melodies, which suits the mood perfectly.