Director Aoyama Shinji describes Eureka as "a sort of prayer for modern man, who is searching for the courage to go on living." He continues: "A crime is committed suddenly, as if it were a natural disaster. It changes the lives of three people, who formerly led lives that were quite normal. It is as though they are pursued by an endless tidal wave preventing them from regaining their balanced lives. On the edge of despair, they take off for a voyage of resurrection."

Tipped as the discovery of this year's Cannes festival, with his Eureka listed by insiders as the dark horse to win the Palme d'Or, Japanese director Aoyama Shinji is anything but unknown on the festival circuit. His films have been invited to Locarno, Rotterdam, Torino, Toronto and the Viennale, to say nothing of being awarded the Grand Prix of the Japanese Film Industry Professional Awards for his debut feature film, Helpless (1995). An independent film-maker to the core, he is involved in nearly every major aspect of a production.

"In my earlier films," he says, "I told stories that juxtaposed social misfits, each under the burden of that particular psychological baggage of postwar Japan. With Eureka, I add to my body of work a prayer for life and the desire to be reborn." The earlier films consist of It's Not In The Textbook, a straight-to-video project, the first theatrical feature Helpless (1995), then Two Punks (1996), Wild Life (1997), An Obsession (1997) and Shady Grove (1999). Born in 1964 in Kita-Kyushu, Aoyama Shinji studied at Rikkyo University and, influenced by Shingehiko Hasumi's classes on film criticism, began to make 8mm films: Straight To The Night and The Red Muffler. On graduating, he entered the film industry as a prop assistant, then rose to assistant director (Kiyoshi Kurosawa's The Guard From The Underground).

Meanwhile, he contributed essays and criticism to Cahiers Du Cinema Japan and Esquire Japan. Shinji also worked as assistant director on Fridrik Thór Fridriksson's Cold Fever, the story of a Japanese youth journeying to Iceland to fulfil a burial ritual and thus pay respect to his deceased parents. He assisted Swiss director Daniel Schmid on The Written Face, a feature made in Japan that incorporated native script and other traditional cultural images.

Shinji is widely respected as a key figure in the current Japanese film revival. "New Japanese Cinema" ­ as spotlighted in a seven-film retrospective programmed at the International Forum of Young Cinema during the 1998 Berlinale ­ has many faces, prospers from a panoply of varied styles and can be justly proud of some recognised auteur directors with a vision all their own. Indeed, some critics and cineastes claim that the Japanese revival is currently the most exciting in the Far East.

Another index of the Japanese revival is the prestigious Netpac (Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema) Prize, awarded at festivals by an independent jury associated with the Cinemaya film journal, which is edited by Aruna Vasudev from New Delhi. At the 1999 Forum in Berlin, the co-winner of the Netpac Prize was Li Ying's 2 H. At the Berlinale Forum last February, the co-winner was Yuji Nakae's Nabbi No Ko (Nabbie's Love).

Shinji tops the output of all his colleagues in the New Japanese Cinema movement by a creative tour-de-force: he wrote, directed, edited and composed the music for Eureka, a three-and-a-
half-hour low-budget road-movie with improvised twists and turns in its casual story line.

The setting is Kyushu in southwest Japan, where, on a hot summer morning, a municipal bus is hijacked and only three people survive the carnage: the driver Makoto (Koji Yakusho), the girl Kozue
(Aoi Miyazaki) and her older brother Naoki (Masaru Miyazaki). Traumatised, the driver disappears. As for the children, they withdraw into themselves, then experience a further shock when their mother divorces and their father dies.

Two years later, Makoto returns to become the children's surrogate father, and the family clan is joined by their cousin, a college student on vacation.

Another twist of fate proves just as unsettling as the first catastrophic blow. The body of a woman is discovered, murdered, and Makoto is suspected. So he buys an old bus, furnishes it with beds, and the four of them set off on a prolonged journey.

"The number four has an important place in Eureka," says Shinji. "There are four principal players and four tombs in the front yard. Four is a number that moves the wheels of destiny ­ at least in the first part of the film. In Japanese, the number four is pronounced 'shi', which could also signify death. The number four could also stand for the traditional family (two parents, two children). In the last 20 years, family tradition has all but disintegrated, and the ideal number ­ four ­ has become meaningless."

Ron Holloway