Businessman Matsunaga didn’t turn up for the date he promised Akiko. So the girl (played by Maeda Atsuko, also a popular singer in Japan) followed him from Tokyo as a stalker into the most desolate corners of the Siberian port of Vladivostok. Dragging a huge suitcase on wheels, she reveals a perseverance you wouldn’t expect from a girl who looks so naive. Kurosawa has his roots in the horror and crime genre, but has already built up a broad oeuvre, including the Cannes award-winning Tokyo Sonata (2008) and the widely praised mini-series Penance (2012). With the satirically tinted Seventh Code (his first film shot outside Japan) he is taking a brief break from heavier work. A free thriller exercise full of surprises, with Russian mafia, a failed Japanese restaurant owner, a mysterious object and a passionate pop song filled with melancholy. Kurosawa’s psychological horror film Real is also being screened at IFFR.