Shinichiro Ueda’s “Earthlings in Love” takes an unusual route to the big screen. Originally released as 30 short-form social media episodes, the project was recut and expanded for its premiere at the 2026 Tokyo International Film Festival, becoming the first so-called microdrama or vertical drama to screen there. The festival version runs 102 minutes, compared with the original 76-minute cut.
The film follows Shinpei, a film director in his forties whose career has been interrupted by early-onset dementia. When he returns to his hometown for the funeral of a former classmate, he begins trying to reconstruct the unfinished science-fiction film he and his high-school friends once made. His memories of the project—and of the people involved—gradually prove less reliable than he believes.
Ueda, who also wrote the screenplay, incorporates the vertical 9:16 format into both the film’s visual language and its storytelling. Dialogue is often framed from the waist up, while compositions guide the eye vertically rather than across the screen. The restricted frame becomes an extension of Shinpei’s emotional isolation and fragmented recollections rather than merely a technical limitation.
The story introduces an AI-based service that recreates Shinpei’s past from photographs and diary entries in an effort to restore his memories. The resulting reconstructions reflect his own uncertain recollections back at him. Although the film is not presented as a direct commentary on artificial intelligence, the device contributes to its portrait of memory as an unstable feedback loop. Nagisa, a former classmate who reconnects with Shinpei, helps anchor him in the present, even as her own connection to his past becomes increasingly significant.
As in Ueda’s “One Cut of the Dead,” the film is structured around reversals and shifting perspectives. Scenes return with previously unseen details, and small changes in what remains inside or outside the frame alter their emotional meaning. The technique makes particularly effective use of the vertical format, turning a potentially restrictive presentation style into a source of narrative surprise.
The film’s themes—high-school nostalgia, lost opportunities and relationships that never fully developed—are familiar within Japanese popular cinema. “Earthlings in Love” nevertheless gives them an earnest, sometimes highly sentimental treatment. Its flashbacks take place in 2000, when Ueda himself was a high-school sophomore and an enthusiastic amateur filmmaker, adding a personal dimension to the story’s memories of youthful creativity.
Kato Shinsuke and Kiyose Yaeko carry the film through its coincidences and emotional turns. At its center is a longing for the uncomplicated pleasure of making something with friends. The film’s movement from disposable social-media episodes to a feature shown at an international festival reinforces its central tension: memories may disappear, but recorded images can preserve what people once created together.
“Earthlings in Love” premiered at the 2026 Tokyo International Film Festival and is currently seeking U.S. distribution.
Sources: IndieWire.