‘Two Cigarettes, Three Nights’ explores messy emotions and moral compromises

CULTURE / Film

‘Two Cigarettes, Three Nights’ explores messy emotions and moral compromises

Kanna (Mayu Matsuoka, left) and Haseo (Ryo Narita) are college friends who reconnect and go on a dayslong journey in Yukiko Mishima’s “Two Cigarettes, Three Nights.” | ? 2026 “OTOKO TOMODACHI” FILM PARTNERS

By Sebastien Raineri
Contributing writer

Oct 20, 2026

In Akane Chihaya’s 2014 novel “Otoko Tomodachi” (“Male Friend”), Haseo asks Kanna a question: “What would you do the day the world ends?”?

The question took on a different meaning for filmmaker Yukiko Mishima when she read the novel in 2020. She had recently released her film “Shape of Red” and was preparing to shoot a new project when the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered theaters and brought production to a halt.

“That line originally had a kind of fable-like quality to it,” Mishima says. “But in 2020 … it stopped feeling like a fable. It felt like something that could genuinely happen at any moment.”