Shell and joint

Nitobe and Sakamoto are childhood friends working in a capsule hotel in Tokyo. Nitobe is interested in arthropods and philosophy, while Sakamoto is interested in suicide. The hotel has all kinds of guests and all kinds of profiles: a Finnish mother who has lost her son, a runaway and a student, among others. All of them live together in the same place sharing the common areas between the capsules, but without crossing each other.

Isamu Hirabayashi (1972) studied at Tokyo’s Musashino Art University. He first worked as a graphic designer before making the leap to film direction. In addition to making commercial films, he has never stopped making independent films, which have won him recognition at the Cannes, Berlin and Venice film festivals.