Raindance Film Festival 2026: Nameless

Writers: Hideo Jojo and Jiro Sato from the latter’s manga series

Director: Hideo Jojo

Nameless has just under a ninety-minute running time and behaves like a movie in a hurry. Violent, garish action is pushed forward while nuance and characterisation are nudged to the side.

The police are driven to extremes when violence breaks out in a diner. Film footage from security cameras shows a lone attacker stabbing people indiscriminately apparently with his bare hand- a knife is not visible. This provokes one of the investigating officers to wonder whether the attack might be linked to strange events which arose years ago when his policeman father found a boy and a girl living rough on the street.

The children are taken to an orphanage and given generic names; mysteriously the boy is wearing a makeshift wire sleeve which prevents him using his right hand. Once the sleeve is removed its purpose becomes apparent- the nameless boy has a mutant ability and is capable of killing with just a touch of his right hand. The film examines events which, in adulthood, drive the titular nameless character to random violence and the consequences for his community.

Nameless puts sensationalism before contemplation. The opening, with a potential victim offering to pray for the nameless protagonist and a neon sign encouraging passers-by to ‘’ Put God in Your Life’’ might be taken as a dismissive attitude towards supposed benign deities who do not intervene in the oncoming violence. In the main, however, the film is simply a relentless display of unchecked horror and societal violence- when the protagonist goes on a killing spree an enraged mob attacks an innocent bystander in error.

Possible motives for the loss of control by the protagonist include frustration that his plan to redeem himself by having a child are not realised. Based upon his background in the care system and general experience of life it is hard to take seriously this somewhat naïve belief- a point made by his partner who refuses to go through with the plan.

Nameless is not a subtle film. The script is blunt to the point of parody; the revelation of the names assigned to the children at the orphanage leads to the obvious observation that they are ‘generic’. The style of acting is highly-strung with lots of shouting and emoting.

Jiro Sato, who co-authored the film from his maga series, plays the nameless protagonist as a terrifying presence. He behaves like a brutal caveman transplanted to modern times- completely unaware of societal norms and indifferent to other people. Sato’s blood-stained face is a study in frustration and rage; eyes compulsively blinking and teeth snarling at the world.  This anonymous, unreasoning menace adds to the sense of a society in which violence can break out for arbitrary reasons and no-one is safe. The film shares the sadistic tendencies of the protagonist; his mutant ability makes it possible to kill painlessly but instead he indulges in a slashing and stabbing spree intended to provoke panic.

The unrestrained violence and hyper-real atmosphere is unlikely to attract wide audiences to Nameless but fans of the source material will be delighted by the faithful adaptation.

Nameless is screening at the Raindance Film Festival 2026 from 17-26 June.