Blue Period

Blue Period (2024) is a Japanese drama you can watch online on iFILM. Yatora Yaguchi looks like the model high schooler — good grades, easy friendships, no real effort required. It also bores him to death. Then he drifts into the school art room one day and a single painting stops him cold, opening up a kind of beauty he never knew was there.

From that moment painting takes him over completely. Yatora sets his sights on the Tokyo University of the Arts, one of the toughest schools in the country to get into, and for the first time he throws himself at something where hard work and talent might still not be enough. The film is honest about how brutal and unforgiving art can be: the sleepless nights, the blank canvas, the rival pieces good enough to make you want to quit. Gordon Maeda plays the lead.

This is a live-action take on Tsubasa Yamaguchi's acclaimed manga, directed by Kentaro Hagiwara. It is a story about a late-found calling tearing up a comfortable, hollow life, and about gambling everything on the one thing that finally moves you. Stream Blue Period (2024) online on iFILM.