Dawn of the Felines follows three Tokyo call girls and their myriad encounters including perverted Johns, kinky underground nightclub spectacles, and the constantly present threat of being busted by the cops. The women’s descent into the night tell a hard chronicle of urban loneliness and survival in the same vein as Shiraishi Kazuya's earlier films The Devil's Path (NYAFF 2014) and Twisted Justice (NYAFF 2016). Paying tribute to Tanaka Noboru's Roman Porno classic Night of the Felines (1972), Shiraishi explores the same moral universe with an even more assured authorial grip, never straying outside the formal framework of the genre, which he exploits adroitly. Instead of carnal kicks, Shiraishi goes sin-deep and presents the cracks and flaws behind the smiling facades of the sex workers, who are never portrayed as victims. He shifts focus to the women’s perspectives, and their transformation through sex, showing at each time their various emotional states.