Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!
Written by Cameron Geiser
Warning: This review is for Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!, which is a film presented at the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival. There may be slight spoilers present. Reader discretion is advised.
Image courtesy of the Toronto International film Festival.
Written by Josef Kubota Wladyka and Nicholas Huynh and directed by Josef Kubota Wladyka, Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty! was the most surprising film of my TIFF 2026 experience. This is mostly because I had zero context of the film going in, but also because the title disarmed me with its willingness to be silly. I never expected tragedy to strike the main character in the opening act of the film. Nor for it to be the sole film of 2025 & 2026 at TIFF to actually make me tear up by the time the credits rolled. Yes, this is a story about a ballroom dancer's life in Tokyo, and how she navigates a devastating loss in her life.
Haru (Rinko Kikuchi), known to her friends and family as Ha-Chan, and her husband Luis (Alejandro Edda) compete together in Tokyo’s ballroom dance scene. It’s clear from the opening scene that not only are they deeply in love with each other– they’re also really damn good at what they do. This film frequently employs magical realism in order to depict the visual sensations the characters are feeling or exemplifying, and when Ha-Chan and Luis dance they begin to float above the dance floor and twirl, caught in the shared ecstasy of their passion in movement. This first (of many highly entertaining scenes to come) dancing sequence showcases the style that the rest of the film will utilize when depicting dance. Right off the bat these scenes are filmed to emphasize dance’s power, glamour, sex appeal, and how ethereal it can be for the performers. Which makes the pain of Luis’ death hurt that much more as he comes crashing down from the air, tumbling down from the dream he lived in.
After the funeral in which Luis’s family pleads with Ha-Chan to take Luis’ body back to be buried in Mexico, Ha-Chan begrudgingly allows this but fears his spirit will not rest. Fast forward nine months and we find Ha-Chan has isolated herself from her friends and family in her depression and has barely left her house. After her friends throw her a birthday party that Ha-Chan doesn’t attend, Hiromi (You) and Yuki (Yoh Yoshida) go drag her out of her house and back to the dance studio even though she fights them every step of the way. Once there she’s informed that their last instructor is gone and replaced with Fedir (Alberto Guerra), the sexy new instructor that was on Dancing with the Stars once. This complicates things for Ha-Chan as she’s clearly interested in Fedir, as is everyone else in the class she’s told, but she’s conflicted. Luis was the love of her life and is moving on from his memory something she can really do? Is it moral to do so? It feels wrong, and yet she cannot deny that getting back into dance again has helped her climb out of her den of isolation.
Navigating the constant flow of the waves of emotion in the wake of tragic grief and choosing how to move through these waters is what the remainder of the film is truly about. Life can be messy at times, strong feelings can grip us and bind us into knots, making us act out in unexpected ways or shrink from the embrace of friends and family when we need their support the most. The fallout of these choices are what we make of them. I found Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty! to be many things, but the beauty of the film is in the balance between heartbreaking and hilarious where this film sits on the fulcrum of comedy and tragedy. It was the most humanistic film I saw this year at TIFF, and I hope you seek this unique and beautiful film out when you can.
Cameron Geiser is an avid consumer of films and books about filmmakers. He'll watch any film at least once, and can usually be spotted at the annual Traverse City Film Festival in Northern Michigan. He also writes about film over at www.spacecortezwrites.com.