I'm using this post to promote a low-budget German movie called "The Red Spot" (Der Rote Punkt / Akai Ten) that marks the feature film debut of writer and director Miyayama Marie. She's the first Japanese student at University of Television and Film Munich.

It's not going to be out in German cinemas before June 4th, but it already screened at several festivals and also gets some pre-screening like now on April 9th in the "Programmkino Ost" in Dresden. If you happen to live in Germany or see it in the program of some international film festival, please try to go and watch this movie. It's a great movie!

The movie is about the Japanese student Onodera Aki, played by director, writer and actress Inomata Yuki (26, picture on the top-right) who travels in her family's tracks from Tokyo to Germany. In idyllic East Allgaeu she meets the Webers, who take her in as their guest. But soon, the situation of the family becomes turbulent by her appearance...

The young Japanese student Onodera Aki is haunted by dreams of long-lost memories from her early childhood. While she should really be concentrating on finding a job after her studies, instead she goes to her parents’ house and discovers an old package from a foreign land tucked away in a storage closet. An old camera containing film and a yellowed envelope with a letter and a map of a foreign country with a red spot marking a particular location seem to be the key to her dreams.

Despite her parents’ and boyfriend’s apprehension, she travels alone to Germany to look for this place. On her search in the idyllic East Allgaeu area, she goes to the local police station looking for help, where the 18-year-old Elias Weber is being questioned. When Elias’ father comes to the police station to pick him up, the policeman asks him to take the Japanese girl with them, as the place she is looking for is near their house.

Father and son drop Aki off near the edge of a forest and drive home. After dinner, Elias takes off with his sister to pick up his motorcycle from the police station and they run into the Japanese girl, who, drenched from the rain, is desperately looking for a place to stay for the night. They take her into town, and after not being able to find a hotel room, they take her back home with them and offer her their guest room.

The next day, Elias helps Aki look for the location on the map where the red mark is. According to Aki, there is supposed to be a memorial stone there for Aki’s biological family, who died at that spot 18 years ago. Later on that evening, Elias gets into a hefty argument with his father which then turns physical. Elias runs out of the house, followed by his father who already has a guilty conscience about hitting his son. Although it is not her intention, Aki’s presence and the search for the past seem to intensify the tension among the Weber family and finally lead to light being shed on family secret.

When Aki finally finds the spot she has been looking for, everyone involved must come to terms with the past in order to make way for a new beginning…