Meisou (めいそう): press kit

Press kit めいそう

Poster: the title めいそう written vertically in white brush lettering over a small shrine in fog.

Stills, posters, key art, title treatment and press notes (EN / JA).

Meisou is not available to watch online. Festival programmers can request a private screener: info [at] albecamedia [dot] com

At a glance

Title: Meisou (めいそう)
Logline: A solo hiker sets out to summit Tokyo’s highest mountain, but with each footfall, the dark legend of a warlord’s last stand grows harder to dismiss, and the way down harder to find.
Directors: Vincent A. Pace & Joseph P. Laird
Cast: Vincent A. Pace (The Hiker); Joseph P. Laird, Vincent A. Pace (The Figure)
Running time: 9:22
Genre: Horror / found footage
Country: USA (shot in Japan: Tokyo, and Okutama / Mt. Kumotori)
Language: English · subtitles EN / JA
Format: 1080p, 16:9, color, stereo
Completed: 2026
Production: Albeca Media LLC
Premiere status: World premiere to be announced

Synopsis

Short (50 words)

On the second day of a hike to Mt. Kumotori, a vlogger films his route, a protection charm, and a story he read online: Taira no Masakado, seven shadow warriors turned to stone, and the boy who made their last stand possible. Then he goes looking for the stones. What he sees there, and what he only thinks he sees, the camera can’t tell apart.

The long synopsis and the director’s statement are on the film page and in the EPK.

Talking points

A dream play in found footage, until it isn’t. Meisou unfolds like a mugen nō, one of Noh’s dream plays: a traveler names his route, tells a place’s legend and spends a night on the mountain. Then it breaks the form.

A real trail, a retold legend. The trail really is signposted as Masakado’s “Wandering Route” (迷走), the source of the title めいそう. On it, the hiker retells the legend as he read it online. The village’s own signs are in frame, so Japanese-reading and English-speaking audiences see two different films.

No score, four drums. Every sound is the hiker’s own except four dry Noh drum strokes on the title cards, and the color drains with the three readings of めいそう.

Directors

Vincent A. Pace

Vincent A. Pace is a writer and filmmaker based in Northbrook, Illinois, and the founder of Albeca Media. His work includes the outdoors channel Prepared for Outdoors and the novel Annihilation in the First Degree, now in final editing. He plays the hiker in Meisou.