(Tennen kokekko). From slacker comedies like No One’s Ark to the hit schoolgirl rock band film Linda Linda Linda, Nobuhiro Yamashita has demonstrated a knack for offbeat humor and for finding poetry in the mundane. With his seventh feature, A Gentle Breeze in the Village, Yamashita turns his perceptive eye to the emotional world of a teenage girl living in the bucolic countryside of Japan. Adapting Fusako Kuramochi’s popular manga series Tennen kokekko, Yamashita tells the story of Soyo, the oldest of six students in a combined elementary and middle school, and the only student in eighth grade—until Osawa, a handsome city boy, transfers from Tokyo. This is a film not of dramatic fireworks, but of finely observed details in the world of an adolescent girl, where the smallest of gestures and revelations can carry the weight of the universe.

—Taro Goto

• Written by Aya Watanabe, based on Tennen kokekko by Fusako Kuramochi. Photographed by Ryuto Kondo. With Kaho, Masaki Okada, Yui Natsukawa, Koichi Sato. (121 mins, In Japanese with English subtitles, Color, 35mm)