Tomoya Sato

Directing

Tomoya Sato

Known for

Directing

Credits

10 titles

Known for

Marehito poster
5.0

A soldier, swaddled in body armor, guards the border of his country. This is not an area of tension; nothing warlike happens here; all that comes from across the border over in the enemy land are radio waves carrying the speeches of its leader, Marehito played by Hideyo Amamoto (Yojimbo, Kamen Rider). The soldier's only duty is to monitor these speeches, and he is sick to the teeth of the dictator's raving. In his quarters is a female android, a 'comfort woman' issued him by the government. He lives quietly with his green-eyed ILYA Type 6, and is responsible for his desert border area. That is the whole of this soldier's life. One day a military official pays a call on his quarters. There has been a shuffle of personnel in the high echelons, and a slight change in policy has been made. The ILYA Type 6 is to be upgraded.

Marehito

1995

Dead or Zombie poster
6.5

Set in a provincial city that has been quarantined to prevent the spread of infection after a zombie outbreak, this human drama depicts the new daily life of a high school girl who remains in the quarantine area to take care of her family who have become zombies. (machine translation)

Dead or Zombie

2022

L'Ilya poster
6.0

Meet L'ILYA, a young video artist who documents peoples' suicides and projects their final moments out of context in trendy clubs. Due to the film being a "moyen metrage" (or "medium-length feature," meaning, as the name implies, a film whose running time is too long to be classified as a short yet too short to be presented as a feature), L'ILYA has had enormous difficulty getting seen, even on the festival circuit. It has nonetheless left scars wherever shown. This film will haunt your memory long after the obituaries fade.

L'Ilya

2001

Shita: A Deadly Silence poster
5.0

A man, living in a humble apartment with his young wife, accidentally pushes her and kills her. The guy is panic-stricken, and first he tries to hide the body, putting it in the trunk of his car, then he realizes she's "some way" alive (a "living dead" form of life), and she even helps him to kill a cop... or is it just his sick imagination?

Shita: A Deadly Silence

2004

Triplets poster
NR

Hana, Tsuki and Yume are identical triplet sisters. Living apart from each other, they are brought back together when Yume falls into a coma. Tsuki gives up all to stay by her sister’s hospital bed. Hana arrives for the expressed purpose of working out what to do with Yume, who no longer has any chance of recovery. Instead, the three have a most unusual conversation.

Triplets

2010

SORA poster
NR

Sora and Umi (both played by Lee Tae-kyung) who were born to a Japanese father and a Korean mother and raised in South Korea. Sora now lives in Shanghai and works as an illustrator. When she meets a Japanese guy named Mochizuki, they become close. This is when her sibling Umi visits. Umi was born inter-sex and had undergone gender reassignment surgery to become a woman. Umi encourages Sora and Mochizuki to fall in love, but Sora becomes mentally unstable.

SORA

2021

Behind the camera

Marehito poster
5.0

A soldier, swaddled in body armor, guards the border of his country. This is not an area of tension; nothing warlike happens here; all that comes from across the border over in the enemy land are radio waves carrying the speeches of its leader, Marehito played by Hideyo Amamoto (Yojimbo, Kamen Rider). The soldier's only duty is to monitor these speeches, and he is sick to the teeth of the dictator's raving. In his quarters is a female android, a 'comfort woman' issued him by the government. He lives quietly with his green-eyed ILYA Type 6, and is responsible for his desert border area. That is the whole of this soldier's life. One day a military official pays a call on his quarters. There has been a shuffle of personnel in the high echelons, and a slight change in policy has been made. The ILYA Type 6 is to be upgraded.

Marehito

1995

Marehito poster
5.0

A soldier, swaddled in body armor, guards the border of his country. This is not an area of tension; nothing warlike happens here; all that comes from across the border over in the enemy land are radio waves carrying the speeches of its leader, Marehito played by Hideyo Amamoto (Yojimbo, Kamen Rider). The soldier's only duty is to monitor these speeches, and he is sick to the teeth of the dictator's raving. In his quarters is a female android, a 'comfort woman' issued him by the government. He lives quietly with his green-eyed ILYA Type 6, and is responsible for his desert border area. That is the whole of this soldier's life. One day a military official pays a call on his quarters. There has been a shuffle of personnel in the high echelons, and a slight change in policy has been made. The ILYA Type 6 is to be upgraded.

Marehito

1995

Dead or Zombie poster
6.5

Set in a provincial city that has been quarantined to prevent the spread of infection after a zombie outbreak, this human drama depicts the new daily life of a high school girl who remains in the quarantine area to take care of her family who have become zombies. (machine translation)

Dead or Zombie

2022

Dead or Zombie poster
6.5

Set in a provincial city that has been quarantined to prevent the spread of infection after a zombie outbreak, this human drama depicts the new daily life of a high school girl who remains in the quarantine area to take care of her family who have become zombies. (machine translation)

Dead or Zombie

2022

L'Ilya poster
6.0

Meet L'ILYA, a young video artist who documents peoples' suicides and projects their final moments out of context in trendy clubs. Due to the film being a "moyen metrage" (or "medium-length feature," meaning, as the name implies, a film whose running time is too long to be classified as a short yet too short to be presented as a feature), L'ILYA has had enormous difficulty getting seen, even on the festival circuit. It has nonetheless left scars wherever shown. This film will haunt your memory long after the obituaries fade.

L'Ilya

2001

L'Ilya poster
6.0

Meet L'ILYA, a young video artist who documents peoples' suicides and projects their final moments out of context in trendy clubs. Due to the film being a "moyen metrage" (or "medium-length feature," meaning, as the name implies, a film whose running time is too long to be classified as a short yet too short to be presented as a feature), L'ILYA has had enormous difficulty getting seen, even on the festival circuit. It has nonetheless left scars wherever shown. This film will haunt your memory long after the obituaries fade.

L'Ilya

2001

Shita: A Deadly Silence poster
5.0

A man, living in a humble apartment with his young wife, accidentally pushes her and kills her. The guy is panic-stricken, and first he tries to hide the body, putting it in the trunk of his car, then he realizes she's "some way" alive (a "living dead" form of life), and she even helps him to kill a cop... or is it just his sick imagination?

Shita: A Deadly Silence

2004

Triplets poster
NR

Hana, Tsuki and Yume are identical triplet sisters. Living apart from each other, they are brought back together when Yume falls into a coma. Tsuki gives up all to stay by her sister’s hospital bed. Hana arrives for the expressed purpose of working out what to do with Yume, who no longer has any chance of recovery. Instead, the three have a most unusual conversation.

Triplets

2010

SORA poster
NR

Sora and Umi (both played by Lee Tae-kyung) who were born to a Japanese father and a Korean mother and raised in South Korea. Sora now lives in Shanghai and works as an illustrator. When she meets a Japanese guy named Mochizuki, they become close. This is when her sibling Umi visits. Umi was born inter-sex and had undergone gender reassignment surgery to become a woman. Umi encourages Sora and Mochizuki to fall in love, but Sora becomes mentally unstable.

SORA

2021

Small Gauge Trauma poster
1.0

Hand-picked by Fantasia’s Mitch Davis, SMALL GAUGE TRAUMA is an extraordinary collection of 13 award-winning shorts from 8 countries. It represents some of the strongest and most eccentric highlights from the festival’s trailblazing history with the form and is a veritable must-have for lovers of the unusual, aficionados of the fantastic and anyone with an interest in world cinema.

Small Gauge Trauma

2006