In the cold and conformist world of Japanese retail, convenience store clerk Sakai slowly awakens to the horrors of the system just as his orderly world of cheap consumerism begins to unravel with brutal consequences.
What does it take to drain a person of their humanity? According to Iwasaki Yusuke, a convenience store uniform and a morning meeting ritual will do it.
AnyMart 2026
チルド
Modern Japan’s stifling corporate landscape is put under a blood-soaked microscope in Iwasaki Yusuke’s absurdist horror-comedy AnyMart, a mesmerising debut (world premiering in this year’s Berlinale Forum where it won the FIPRESCI Award) that will find fans in anyone who has done a torturous retail shift and thought about sticking a middle finger to the maxim that “the customer is always right”.
Convenience store clerk Sakai’s life is dominated by shifts at the pristine convenience store AnyMart, a soul-sucking retail prison where orderliness, forced smiles and sterile, artificial interiors are a way of life. As new staff arrive and minor incidents around the neighbourhood pile up, the mask slips on this conformist world, and carnage erupts.
A smart fusion of deadpan humour and slow-burn creeps (think Kiyoshi Kurosawa), AnyMart announces a serious filmmaking talent in Iwasaki Yusuke, himself the son of a convenience store owner, who adeptly transitions the film from unnerving comedy to potent horror show while retaining its underlying function as a stinging social critique. AnyMart pinpoints something seriously horrific about the disastrous consequences of cheap consumerism and rigid conformity to the human spirit … plus you’ll never look at packaged chicken quite the same way again.
– Cho Jinseok