ONAKA looks at people through traces, absences, and fragments rather than through direct explanation.At the center of the film is a game of shiritori played alone. A word game that is normally shared with someone else becomes an expression of solitude, while also carrying the melancholy of a childhood pastime gradually left behind in adulthood.The seemingly meaningless chains of words and images occasionally intersect and give meaning to one another, only to drift apart again. For me, this unstable relationship reflects the distance between myself and other people.The title ONAKA also holds two contrasting feelings: the simple, almost comic sensation of being hungry, and the vulnerability of exposing one’s belly—of revealing something unguarded and finding, perhaps, a small sense of relief in doing so.