A hilarious Japanese time-loop mystery where escaping home may be the hardest and most wonderful journey of all.

What if leaving home simply wasn’t an option? For 29-year-old Satomi, the answer seems absurdly literal. On the very morning she is finally ready to abandon her hometown for Tokyo, she discovers that every attempt to leave brings her straight back to where she started. Caught in an inexplicable time loop, Satomi has no choice but to confront the place and the people she was so determined to leave behind.

Her unlikely ally is Keisuke, a former schoolmate who once escaped to Tokyo in pursuit of a career as a researcher, only to return home after his dreams collapsed. Together, they embark on a search for the cause of the strange phenomenon, gradually uncovering questions that are far more personal than scientific.

With its playful sci-fi premise and lighthearted black-comedy touch, the film inevitably recalls the classic “Groundhog Day” (1993, dir. Harold Ramis), but gives the familiar time-loop formula a distinctly Japanese sense of place and belonging. At its heart is the superb Hitomi Uneda, whose performance as Satomi makes this bittersweet journey impossible to forget in this witty and highly entertaining closing film of this year’s Critics’ Picks selection. By the time the loop finally comes to an end, one thing becomes clear: home is where the heart is!

Nikolaj Nikitin