Late on in “Kefi,” one of its central protagonists — the youngest of three sisters — justifies a spontaneous hook-up with a random stranger by claiming that “the flow” of their chance encounter “was really cinematic.” The same, perhaps, can be said for Kisin Saito’s brazenly confident debut feature as a whole — a genre-fluid kaleidoscope of styles and storylines that frequently skirts the border of incoherence, only to right itself time and again thanks to the filmmaker’s assured command of cinematic aesthetics.

Aliens, dinosaurs, drugs, and cheeseburgers all gatecrash an otherwise grounded drama about shared grief and family reconciliation, in which a trio of siblings return to their childhood home following the death of their estranged father. Premiering in Tokyo’s now-competitive Nippon Cinema Now strand, what emerges is a chaotic, multi-stranded reunion story propelled by dream logic, identity-altering narcotics and an over-indulgence of junk food, that should catch the attention of adventurous genre festivals and ballsy boutique distributors alike, as “Kefi” announces the arrival of a new talent for whom visual bombast and technical bravado are in bountiful supply.

Read my full Variety review here