The Asadas!

The Asadas! (浅田家！, 2020) is a Japanese drama-comedy you can watch online on iFILM. Masashi Asada photographs his family in elaborate staged scenes — dad in a firefighter's uniform, mom as the dutiful housewife, grandfather dressed as a toddler. What starts as a family tradition turns into a real career. Directed by Ryota Nakano, the film pairs Kazunari Ninomiya — internationally known from Clint Eastwood's Letters from Iwo Jima and as a member of pop group Arashi — with Satoshi Tsumabuki as the Asada brothers.

Then the March 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami struck. In the flood, entire family histories disappeared — photographs, the one irreplaceable record. Masashi travels to the disaster zone. Not to shoot, but to find surviving prints and bring them back to the people who lost them.

At 127 minutes, the film holds two registers at once — warm comedy and quiet devastation — and neither cancels out the other. Ninomiya gives a performance that earns every quiet scene it gets. Stream The Asadas! online on iFILM.