Charlotte Dumas

A little girl in a purplish-gray horse suit travels through urban Japanese landscapes to a remote island where she finds kinship with the horses, subtly restoring the historical bond between animal and mankind.

In Yorishiro a little girl in a purplish-gray horse suit travels through urban Japanese landscapes to this remote island where she finds kinship with the horses of the island, subtly restoring the historical bond between animal and man kind. The suit transforms her into an intermediate form of humans and animals. Perhaps as a “Yorishiro”; something or someone who can contain the spirit or soul of a “kami” – (nature) god. Or, as the other meaning of the word can indicate, a transformation through metamorphosis. Yorishiro is the second film of Dumas in which horses of an ancient breed that still roam freely on a small Japanese island play an important role. In the first film on this island, Shio (2018), the horses and a Japanese girl seem to be waiting for something or someone.