Japan’s Gaga Corporation has teamed with Paris-based Wild Bunch International to handle sales of Monster, the upcoming film by Japanese auteur Hirokazu Kore-eda.
WBI will handle worldwide sales excluding Asia, which will be handled by Gaga.
A promo will be shown to buyers at the upcoming European Film Market (EFM), which runs February 16-22 alongside the Berlinale. Gaga and WBI began collaborating on Kore-eda’s titles in 2011 with I Wish, which played Toronto and San Sebastian film festivals.
As previously announced, Monster will be released in Japan on June 2, suggesting a possible return to Cannes for Kore-eda, who has been a regular in Competition at the festival since Distance in 2001 and won the Palme d’Or with Shoplifters in 2018.
The story remains under wraps but was scripted by TV writer Yuji Sakamoto, marking only the second feature by Kore-eda to be scripted by another writer since his 1995 debut drama Maborosi.
The film reunites the Japanese director with his Shoplifters star Ando Sakura and also includes Nagayama Eita, Tanaka Yuko and child actors Kurokawa Soya and Hiiragi Hinata. Oscar-winning composer Ryuichi Sakamoto is also on board.
Lead producer is Genki Kawamura, who won best director at San Sebastian last year with his debut A Hundred Flowers. Kawamura recently worked with Kore-eda on Netflix series The Makanai: Cooking For The Maiko House, which launched on the streaming platform last month.
Kenji Yamada also produces Monster and production partners are Toho, Gaga, Fuji Television Network, AOI Pro and Kore-eda’s company Bun-Buku.
It marks Kore-eda’s first film to be made in Japan since Shoplifters, having directed French feature The Truth, which premiered at Venice in 2019, and Korean film Broker, which won Song Kang-ho best actor at last year’s Cannes.
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