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I've written about situational thrillers under Olympic-sized pool covers, atop mile-high radio tower platforms, and even locked in a rogue sailboat's bathroom — yet "#Manhole" still earns originality points. Director Kazuyoshi Kumakiri and writer Kazuyoshi Kumakiri pop the metal cover off an abandoned concrete basin like a bottle for catching fireflies. The single-location motivations behind "#Manhole" recall Mariano Cohn's SUV chamber piece "4x4," more obscure in presentation and nefariously themed. Where something like Rodrigo Cortés' "Buried" relies on the grounded claustrophobic trauma of being sealed alive in a coffin, "#Manhole" embraces absurdity and twisty storytelling beyond being stuck in one place. Cutthroat realism is traded for social media skewering amidst many other wicked veers into derangement, with a spike-tipped ending for the ages.

Yûto Nakajima stars as thriving Japanese businessman Shunsuke Kawamura. His coworkers throw him a congratulatory post-work party to celebrate his not-far-off wedding. Shunsuke walks home that night with a light-headed buzz,...

It takes a great deal of careful plotting to make a good confined single location thriller. Films such as Buried (2010), The Pool (2018), and 4×4 (2019) rely on a variety of complications to maintain tension without becoming repetitive or overstaying their welcome. It’s a delicate balance, but when it’s done well, the results can be electrifying.

Writer Michitaka Okada adopts a unique conceit for their latest, #Manhole, which readily employs social media to drive the narrative of a successful realtor, Shunsuke Kawamura (Yûto Nakajima), who falls down an open manhole the night before his wedding.

Director Kazuyoshi Kumakiri cues audiences that phones will play a vital part by opening with an elaborate split-screen video of Shunsuke’s work colleagues taping congratulations at his wedding party. Immediately following the party, a drunken Shunsuke bids his friend Kase (Kento Nagayama) goodbye, stumbles down the street and almost immediately falls down a hole in the ground.

It was either Nietzsche or Tex Avery — but one of our great philosophers — who asserted that there are two types of people in this world: those who walk through life blithely unbothered by manholes, and those who are destined to fall into them. Now, for curious members of the former class, comes an intimate examination of what it’s like to be one of the latter: “#Manhole,” Japanese director Kazuyoshi Kumakiri’s slick, increasingly deranged survival thriller about a man who will finally learn to know his true nature from a hole in the ground.

Popular, successful and possessed of highly covetable good looks, Shunsuke Kawamura has the world at his feet. It’s the eve of his wedding to the pregnant daughter of his company’s CEO, and his co-workers have organized a surprise party to toast his good fortune. Walking home drunk from the festivities, Shunsuke suddenly stumbles.

Yuto Nakajima admits that is a great feeling to be roaming free on the streets of a city that doesn’t recognize his face. In Japan he wouldn’t last a meter without being surrounded by screaming fans. As the member of Hey! Say! Jump band, and as a famous TV personality, he has long forgotten what a quiet life is. It is therefore a great discovery to see him in a challenging role which is the one and only in Kazuyoshi Kumakiri’s cynical thriller gone horror, about a seemingly nice young man in distress who gradually shows his real face, although the face isn’t his at all.

We met with the Japanese director and his star in the Berlinale Palast, to discuss the wonderfully unpredictable movie “#Manhole”, the difficulties of shooting in a narrow space and the challenge of turning a one man show into a pulse-racing show.

Twenty-five years after the international premiere of his graduation work “Banquet of The Beasts” in the Panorama section, and twenty-two after “Hole in the Sky”, Kazuyoshi Kumakiri is back in Berlin with the thriller “#Manhole” which celebrates its international premiere in the Berlinale Special program. In this one-man suspense drama, a relatively simple story of an unfortunate incident evolves into a film rich with unexpected twists.

#Manhole is screening at Berlinale

On the evening before his wedding day, Shunsuke (Yuto Nakajima) walks into into his own stag party he was unaware of. The mood is excellent: as congratulations pour in, so do drinks. A bit wobbly after a drink too many in a pub in Shibuya district, Shunsuke falls inside a manhole, and wakes up injured and unable to climb back to the street. To make things worse, his cellphone Gps stops working and a heavy rain starts falling making his situation more insufferable.

John Malkovich starrer Seneca – On the Creation of Earthquakes and Alex Gibney’s untitled Boris Becker documentary are set to have their world premieres at the upcoming Berlin International Film Festival next year. The projects are among the six titles which will play in the fest’s Berlinale Special Gala section, which also includes Brandon Cronenberg’s Infinity Pool, starring Alexander Skarsgård, Mia Goth and Cleopatra Coleman and Todd Field’s Tár.

Infinity Pool will get its European premiere at the festival while Field and Tár stars Cate Blanchett and Nina Hoss and composer Hildur Guðnadóttir will attend the festival to give a public talk as part of the Berlinale Talents section.

The festival also announced its first project from its Berlinale Series section: Zdf’s eco-thriller The Swarm (Der Schwarm), based on the eponymous bestseller by Frank Schätzing. The project follows an international group of scientists who do research...