Director Zeze Takahisa made waves with his 4-hour opus Heaven’s Story in 2010. Despite its running time, the independently produced movie took home the FIPRESCI Prize at the 61st Berlin International Film Festival among other praises & accolades at home and abroad. He has a completed shooting a new movie titled Kiku to Girochin – Onna Zumo to Anakisuto (lit. Kiku and Guillotine – a female sumo and an anarchist), the premise of which seems quite interesting. Set in the Taisho Era, just after the Great Kanto Earthquake, the story of two women sumo wrestlers who participated in an exhibition troupe of female sumo (think the women’s baseball league from WWII featured in A League of their Own) and their relationship with a group of anarchists calling themselves “Guillotine” promises stout-hearted entertainment that depicts “with romance, action, and social satire the rough and ragged power of the common people.” The existence of female sumo wrestlers in that period is sure to be a revelation to many, even in Japan, and the added element of the two female …