top of page
Shunsaku Hayashi
Director
Shunsaku Hayashi (b. 1992, Osaka) is a painter and filmmaker. He studied Fine Art at Goldsmiths, University of London, under a fellowship granted by the Agency for Cultural Affairs in Japan from 2012 to 2015.
His first stop-motion animation, Remember (2015), won the Golden Horseman for Animated Film at the 28th Filmfest Dresden. In 2017, Interstitial won the Grand Jury Prize for Animated Short at the 23rd Slamdance Film Festival, and Railment received the Chris Frayne Award for Best Animated Film at the 55th Ann Arbor Film Festival. In 2019, Leaking Life was selected for the Generation 14plus section at the 69th Berlin International Film Festival.
In 2020, Hayashi served as an award presenter for the Student Academy Awards. His short film Our Pain (2023) received the High Risk Award at the Fantoche International Animation Film Festival and the Jury Special Award at Animafest Zagreb.
Hayashi completed his first feature-length film, invisions, in 2025.
Director Statement
I grew up in central Osaka, Japan, near a historic red-light district - a place filled with day laborers, homeless individuals, and people from historically discriminated communities. This diverse and complex neighborhood profoundly shaped my worldview.
From a young age, I found solace in painting on canvas. Eventually, I began using my paintings in stop-motion animation and completed my first short film in 2015. Since then, I have continued creating short animations, with each one screened at international film festivals and earning awards.
My first feature film, invisions, takes this technique further, combining hand-paintings, photographs, and video clips. This approach reflects my experiences volunteering in Fukushima after the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, 2011. Walking through "empty spaces," I felt the weight of vanishing histories. These absences inspired the visual language of this film.
In invisions, I explore fragments of the human body - hands and feet - that feel unstable yet resonate deeply. For me, these fragments are more than animation; they intertwine fractured visuals with the act of observing, crafting a contemporary myth.
bottom of page