The Contestant (2023) on Netflix
R20231h 31mDocumentary
For a Japanese television challenge, Tomoaki Hamatsu, known as Nasubi, lives alone in a bare apartment with no clothes and no outside contact. He must win one million yen by mail-in sweepstakes.
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- Netflix4.1/5
- IMDb7.2/104,154 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes92%
Trailer
Plot summary
The Japanese program Susunu! Denpa Shōnen hands Tomoaki Hamatsu, known as Nasubi, a contest: stay in a small apartment with no clothes, no money and no contact with anyone outside until he has won one million yen through sweepstakes entries found in magazines. It begins in 1998. Weeks turn into months as he fills out entry forms, keeps a diary and waits. The diary becomes a best seller in Japan, and the segment is watched by 17 million people on Sunday nights, while he is never told that the footage is going out on national television. Years afterward, the documentary adds interviews with Nasubi, his mother and the producer of the program about how the challenge was arranged.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Contestant (2023)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Securing access to the original footage took what director Clair Titley called years of lawyers talking to each other in LA and Tokyo. Toshio Tsuchiya, a producer of the original Japanese show who was still working at the channel, vouched for the filmmakers and put them in touch with the right people.
- The filmmakers had no access to dailies or rushes, only what had gone out on air, which Titley called a huge challenge; they also painstakingly translated all of the on-screen VFX and graphics into English.
Stills
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