Yes, yes, technically Samurai Fiction director Hiroyuki Nakano officially got back into the director's chair with his destined-for-pachinko screens remake of Seven Samurai but unless some brave DVD label takes a flyer on that one - Hey BCI! It's got Sonny Chiba in it! And the trailers look great! - this is the first new Nakano film that people might actually have a chance of seeing.
Now, details from those more knowledgable than I would be gratefully accepted as I stumbled across the website purely by accident and speak not a lick of Japanese but it looks like what we've got here is an expansion of Nakano's 2006 short film Iron, a film that played Critics Week at Cannes in 2006. Beyond this and the fact that the trailer is filled with the sort of sumptuous black and white photography that made Samurai Fiction such a treat to look at, I know nothing. Well, almost nothing. I know you can watch the trailer at the link below.
** My thanks to Kevin from Nippon Cinema for clarifying some things on this. Turns out that this is a new short film anthology that Nakano is heavily involved with. The original version of Iron is included along with two newer Nakano-directed shorts. Details below in the comments section.
I think it's same Iron.. he's just done some more shorts since then. The anthology itself is called "Otokotachi no Shi" ("Poems of Men", I guess?) and these are the segments:
"Iron" (15min.) by Hiroyuki Nakano
"Spaghetti Neapolitan" (12min. 42sec.) by Atsushi Kaneshige
"3:03:15pm Kanransha" (12min. 54sec.) by Hiroyuki Nakano
"Fuji to Doonatsu" (10min. 52sec.) by Yasuhisa Serizawa
"Todai" (26min. 43sec.) by Hiroyuki Nakano
Although it would have been pretty awesome if Lou Oshiba just strolled into an artsy Nakano flick and started goofing around.
Ah, so it's a new shorts collection, then? I guess it's unlikely to get an English friendly release, then. I'm still sad the Short Films anthology that was part of the SF series never got an English friendly release. Still, two new shorts from him aint bad ...