“MEMORIZU” // TRIBECA 2026
BY MATEO MORENO
The most baffling thing about memory is just how unreliable it is. What one person remembers about a moment in time can be vastly different than someone else’s, even though they were in the same moment together. That’s why so many of us rely on things to hold our memories, to help our own faulty perceptions along and grasp onto moments that have slipped a bit too far away from us to remember clearly. Photography is one of the earliest examples of this and the beauty of this is explored in MEMORIZU, which recently won “Best New Narrative Director (for Miiku Sakanishi) at the 2026 Tribeca Film Festival. The film doesn’t follow a typical structure or plot that most films rely on. Much like. memories itself, it relies on moments, moments of these characters lives as we are invited to join them in. The structure of the film follows a family living in Tokyo. Yuta (Tasuku Emoto) is traveling at the beginning of the film to a small town in Kyushu where he will take care of his father-in-law Makoto (Issey Ogata). Makoto runs a photo shop in the small town and has fractured his leg, so Yuta visiting is a much-needed support system in day-to-day help for two months. What’s magnetic about this film is seeing how Yuta keeps in contact with his family over the course of the two months. We learn of them through pictures, phone calls and videos. If you were to stumble upon pictures, hear phone calls and see videos of any family, you would start to learn more and more about them, and that’s what happens here.
Moving at a gentle and caring pace, Sakanishi has created a lovely ode to holding onto memories through devices outside of our own minds. It’s like flipping through a picture book and video of Yuta’s that we’ve stumbled upon one day and the beauty of all of the small moment are really amplified here. Moments that seem trivial, like a girl riding a bike or a store turning over its “closed” sign become part of a unusual narrative. After all, the small moments, when looking back, are the things that really have the true beauty and joy in our own memories. When one person sees a girl riding a bike, it might just be that. For another, that memory could bring them to tears. Other moments, like Yuta’s wife Yuki (Moeka Hoshi) being a tour guide back in Tokyo or Makoto telling Yuta memories of a man that’s passed on become striking small moments, moments that become strikingly important moments for both Yuta and Yuki. We get to see how strangers sharing a moment become a memory for both of them, or a man who’s passed on has his memories transferred to another man who has never known him. It’s lovely little passages like this that make MEMORIZU a wonderfully original film. Sakanishi directs the film with such a delicate care you may forget you’re watching a film and think instead you’re simply experiencing memories of the simple moments of life. In a lot of ways, what could be sweeter?
GRADE: A-
WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY Miiku Sakanishi STARRING Moeka Hoshi, Issey Ogata, Yu Kashii, Masayo Umezawa, Tasuku Emoto SELECTED AS PART OF THE 2026 TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL. FOR MORE INFO:https://tribecafilm.com/films/memorizu-2026