Distance (2001 Kore-eda)
- heavy
- slow-burn
- bleak
Heavy, slow-burn, measured drama, grounded in texture. Nihilistic, intimate, cold, hand-scored across twelve axes of taste.
How every film is hand-scored →On the third anniversary of a cult's failed chemical attack on Tokyo and their subsequent mass suicide, family members of those affected gather at the cult's former base on the shores of a lake to observe the anniversary of their loved ones' deaths.
Our read · Distance (2001 Kore-eda) (2001) reads as a heavy, slow-burn, grounded drama entry — measured in intensity, intimate in scope, cold in temperature, nihilistic in outlook, with a strong directorial signature. Hand-scored on twelve axes of taste — mood, pacing, weirdness, hope, stakes, humour, reality, density, warmth, auteur, intensity, and era — with a derived palette drawn from its dominant cinematography.
More info & search links
The shape of Distance
What watching it is actually like.
“You want a slow, quiet Japanese film about grief and families after a cult tragedy.”
Skip it tonight — Skip if deliberate slow pace or heavy themes of loss and cult violence unsettle you.
The reading.
Each axis is hand-scored — not derived from votes or genre averages. The marker shows where this film sits; the gradient fill uses the film's own cinematography palette.
Eight films that read most like this one.
Closeness in the twelve-axis space — how the film actually reads, not “people also liked.”
Discussion
What does your Movie DNA look like?
Rate a few films you've seen. We map your taste across the same twelve axes and find the films you'll actually want to watch tonight.
Calibrate yourself