Screening in Partnership with Lightbox Film Center
Sep 30, 2026, 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM
Bok Auditorium, 800 Mifflin St, Philadelphia, PA 19148, USA

In 1970s Japan, at the height of social unrest, Satoshi Kirishima was a member of the “Scorpion Cell” of the East Asian Anti-Japanese Armed Front, a new left-wing extremist group. Considered a wanted criminal, the young Kirishima went on the run, under constant fear of being caught. He became a day laborer to make ends meet, and several decades ago, he began a live-in job at a construction company in Fujisawa City, Kanagawa Prefecture, under the alias Hiroshi Uchida. While he found moments of respite through hobbies, he remained haunted by the presence of his former friends—those who struggled in prison, those who fled the country, and those who took their own lives. In 2024, at the age of 70, Kirishima found himself hovering between life and death in a hospital bed with a terminal cancer diagnosis. As his consciousness fades, memories of his time on the run with his comrades in the East Asian Anti-Japanese Armed Front come to the surface. What did he spend his life chasing and what did he hope to gain at the end of nearly fifty years of fugitivity? What was he trying to express on his death bed as he confessed, “I am Satoshi Kirishima!” Juxtaposing his own experiences, director Masao Adachi depicts Kirishima’s anguish and determination in Escape. (Masao Adachi, Japan, 2025, 114 min.) In Japanese with English subtitles

Organized by Go Hirasawa