Japan’s Nikkatsu has secured key sales of Cloud, the upcoming suspense thriller by acclaimed auteur Kiyoshi Kurosawa, ahead of its premiere at the Venice Film Festival.
The feature has been acquired for France (Art House Films), Spain (A Contracorriente Films), Italy (Minerva Pictures) and Taiwan (Sky Digi Entertainment).
Cloud will play out of competition at Venice, which runs from August 28-September 7 and revealed its line-up today (July 23).
It will mark a return to the Lido for Kurosawa, who won the Silver Lion for best director at Venice in 2020 with Wife Of A Spy.
The story, written by Kurosawa, centres on a young man whose online money-making schemes lead to life-threatening consequences.
The cast is led by Masaki Suda, who won best actor at the Japanese Academy Awards in 2018 for his performance in Yoshiyuki Kishi’s Wilderness: Part One and was more recently heard as the voice of the Grey Heron in Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli animation The Boy And The Heron. He also appeared in Genki Kawamura’s A Hundred Flowers, which played in competition at San Sebastian in 2022. Co-stars include stars Kotone Furukawa (Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy), Daiken Okudaira (My Small Land) and Amane Okayama (Kingdom franchise).
Produced by Nikkatsu Corporation and Tokyo Theatres Company Inc., Cloud is set for release in Japan on September 27.
It marks the latest in a string of recent projects by the prolific Kurosawa. His mid-length film Chime received its world premiere at the Berlinale in February, and The Serpent’s Path – a French-language remake of his own 1998 Japanese thriller starring Ko Shibasaki, Damien Bonnard and Mathieu Almaric – was released in cinemas in Japan on June 14.
Before Wife Of A Spy in 2020, Kurosawa was at Venice with Penance, which screened out of competition in 2012; Retribution in 2006; and Barren Illusions in 1999.
The Japanese auteur is also a Cannes regular, playing in Competition in 2003 with Bright Future; winning the Un Certain Regard jury prize with Tokyo Sonata in 2008; and winning the directing prize in 2015 with Journey To The Shore. His 2017 feature, Before We Vanish, also played in Un Certain Regard while Japan-Uzbek drama To The Ends Of The Earth screened as the closing film at Locarno in 2021.
The filmmaker previously said of the inspirations behind Cloud: “In the obscure corners of modern-day Japan, violent incidents sometimes occur for seemingly no reason whatsoever. When the causes are investigated, it becomes apparent that a system of sorts exists through which petty grudges and frustrations are accumulated and blown out of proportion by the internet. I wondered if such a phenomenon would serve as subject matter for an action film and began developing this project.”
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