Convenience Store Horror-Comedy ‘AnyMart’: Director Iwasaki Yusuke Unpacks His Berlinale Debut Film

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. That unsettling observation is the foundation of “AnyMart,” his Berlinale Forum debut feature — and one that carries the weight of personal experience. Iwasaki watched it happen to his own father, a lively town liquor store owner who became, in his son’s telling, “inorganic and lacking humanity” after taking over a convenience store.

Sometani Shota stars as Sakai, a convenience store clerk who clocks in, recites the employee pledges, restocks the shelves, and feels nothing — until new recruit Ogawa (Erika Karata) arrives as one of several anomalies that send the store’s standardized operations spiraling toward bloody ends.

Fusing Aki Kaurismäki-esque deadpan with Kurosawa Kiyoshi-inflected slow-burn horror, the film follows Iwasaki’s short “Void,” which played International Film Festival Rotterdam’s Tiger…