Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!

Dir: Josef Kubota Wladyka, US/Japan, 2026, Comedy/Drama.
Rinko Kikuchi, Alberto Guerra, Alejandro Edda.
In Japanese, English, and Spanish with English subtitles.
Winner, Sundance Directing Award: U.S. Dramatic.
"The rumba, the cha-cha and the tango help bring a widow out of mourning in this surprisingly buoyant, unsentimental film about grief. Rinko Kikuchi is affecting and funny as Haru, a middle-aged woman with an unstylish mop of curls, wearing heavy blue eyeshadow and spangly dresses when she and her Mexican husband, Luis, enter ballroom dance competitions in Tokyo. When Luis dies suddenly, Haru hides away until her sister drags her out to a dance class and she finds that her new instructor, Fedir, is irresistible. Director Josef Kubota Wladyka shifts from poignant emotion to comedy to surreal scenes that take us inside Haru’s fantasies just as gracefully as the dialogue shifts from Japanese to Spanish and English. Ha-chan, Shake Your Booty! — the title, cringey though it may sound, is knowingly ironic in context — is a small delight." - Caryn James, The Hollywood Reporter

Genre: Action

Runtime: 122 min