Trailer - Hate, Hallelujah! (Nikume, Hareruya!)

The official website for Yoshiyuki Itakura’s Hate, Hallelujah! has been updated with a teaser trailer. The film was actually produced back in 2006 with funding from Osaka’s CO2 festival (Cineaste Organization Osaka) and has been screened at various other indie-focused festivals over the years. It’s finally going to get a public screening at Shibuya Uplink X on June 26, 2010.

The project was considered a controversial choice for CO2, because the story involves the Great Hanshin earthquake of 1995 which killed over 6,400 people in and around Kobe.

In the film, Jun Usaka plays a young man named Hirota who lost both his parents in the earthquake 10 years earlier. He moved into his uncle’s house along with his grandmother and, over time, his memories of the earthquake began to fade entirely. However, he’s forced to face those memories again when his grandmother, now suffering from dementia, tells him he had a younger sister named Saki. In a confused state, Hirota goes downtown and happens to meet a young girl named Saki (Nanami Fujimoto) whom he comes to believe is his long-lost sister.