Coproduction Office boards Fires On The Plain

Coproduction Office is beginning world sales on maverick Japanese director Shinya Tsukamoto’s Venice competition entry, Fires On The Plain (Nobi), company boss Philippe Bober has confirmed. All territories are available excluding Japan.

After Venice, the film screens in Toronto’s Wavelengths section.

The anti-war film, made through Kaijyu Theater, is the second project from Tsukamoto that Coproduction Office has handled after Tetsuo: The Bullet Man.

Bober confirmed that the film’s Japanese release has been set for August 15, 2015, the 70th anniversary of date that the Japanese announced their surrender, thereby bringing about the end of the Second World War.

“It has an exceptional character historically speaking,” Bober said of the film, which is set in the Philippines at the end of the War and follows the desperate battle for survival of some stranded Japanese soldiers.

This is one of the only films about Japanese wartime experience made by a director of a younger generation, who didn’t lived through the war. It is expected to provoke a major debate in Japan, where the country’s politicians have become increasingly gung ho about celebrating the country’s military past.

“Now that the Japanese government is thinking about renouncing the anti-war clause in the constitution, maybe this film can offer a contrary opinion not to do so,” Tsukamoto has commented of the film’s anti-war stance.