Vintage Violence
Asian Premiere
Eugene Kotlyarenko USA, Japan 2026 105 min M18 (Violence and Gore)
An American livestreamer brings a pair of vintage denims to Tokyo to sell, but the yakuza gets involved and all goes berserk in this madcap romp that reflects our zeitgeist’s screen obsession and digital voyeurism.
While livestreaming his latest urbex adventure in an abandoned mine in Colorado, Carter finds a pair of nineteenth-century Levi’s jeans. Izumi, one of his subscribers in Japan, suggests he brings it to Tokyo where he can easily sell it in the country’s hot denim market and make a killing. But the venture quickly combusts when Edoga, a denim fiend of the underworld, gets involved, thanks to Izumi’s debt-ridden boyfriend. Amid flurries of texts, the plot grows increasingly frenetic and unhinged as an exiled yakuza, now armed with a cybernetic middle finger that fires a drug mist, comes seeking revenge on Edoga.
Wearing an aesthetic of excess and camp, the film’s manic energy comes from not only its blistering editing but also its split screens—text messaging, streaming and the accompanying live chat exploding with sh*tposts. A memorable chase scene through a gaming arcade, featuring a diegetically glitching Jun Togawa song and Bluetooth earbuds, perhaps captures the spirit of our times: a world grown so loud yet so empty that all we have left are the dopamine highs of a good chase thoroughly mediated by technology.
Synopsis Writer: Fiona Lim
Festival Closing, Q&A, AVAILABLE FOR SALE ON 11 OCT
1 Nov, Sun 5:00PM / 105 min
Capitol Theatre
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Eugene Kotlyarenko
USA, Japan
2026
English, Japanese
English
105 min
M18 (Violence and Gore)
Asian Premiere
Eugene Kotlyarenko
The work of Ukrainian-American filmmaker Eugene Kotlyarenko explores love and cultural madness in the age of social media. Born in Odesa, he moved to New York where he studied film, philosophy and literature at Columbia University. His past features include Wobble Palace (2018) and Spree (2020), which also centres online culture. Vintage Violence premiered at Toronto in the Midnight Madness lineup.
Cole Sprouse,
Kiko Mizuhara,
Nijiro Murakami,
Pierre Taki,
Hio Miyazawa
Alex Hughes,
Riccardo Maddalosso,
Hiroto Ogi,
Eugene Kotlyarenko