Following critically acclaimed films like “Asako I & II” (2018) and the one-two punch of two 2021 films, “Wheel Of Fortune And Fantasy” and “Drive My Car” Japanese filmmaker Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s reputation was sealed as a name that merited international recognition. But it wasn’t until the latter film, “Drive My Car,” which won three awards at Cannes that year, including Best Screenplay, and Hamaguchi received two Academy Awards nominations for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay that he really became an international filmmaking star (he was the third Japanese director ever to be nominated for Oscar’s Best Director). And now he returns in quick succession with his follow-up film “Evil Does Not Exist” (read our review).
“Evil Does Not Exist” has garnered similar acclaim, and it won the Grand Jury Prize at the Venice International Film Festival and the FIPRESCI Award from the International Federation of Film Critics.
It’s a simple tale: a father and daughter’s peaceful lives in a small village outside of Tokyo are disrupted by a new camping site development. The drama stars Hitoshi Omika, Ryo Nishikawa, Ryuji Kosaka, Ayaka Shibutani, Hazuki Kikuchi, and Hiroyuki Miura.
Regardless, here’s the full-fledged synopsis from Venice, where the film made its world premiere earlier this year.
Takumi and his daughter Hana live in Mizubiki Village, close to Tokyo. Like generations before them, they live a modest life according to the cycles and order of nature. One day, the village inhabitants become aware of a plan to build a glamping site near Takumi’s house, offering city residents a comfortable “escape” to nature. When two company representatives from Tokyo arrive in the village to hold a meeting, it becomes clear that the project will have a negative impact on the local water supply, causing unrest. The agency’s mismatched intentions endanger both the ecological balance of the plateau and their way of life, with an aftermath that affects Takumi’s life deeply.
Here’s Hamaguchi’s director’s statement from Venice.:
“In this film, I had a wonderful opportunity to work with Doraibu mai kā’s composer Eiko Ishibashi again. The film project began when she asked me to create some footage for her live performance Gift, and I conceived of the film as an “original source material” for the footage. As I became more and more connected to this film we were creating, Eiko and her friends helped me a lot in the shooting, too. This very free way of filmmaking vitalized me a lot. After the shoot, I felt that I had captured interactions of people in nature and completed the work as a single film with Eiko Ishibashi’s beautiful theme music. I hope the audience will feel the life force of the figures that are stirring in nature and music.”
ScreenDaily released the trailer today, and while there’s no release date yet, one has to assume that releasing the trailer before the year’s end is intentional. Presumably, at least an Oscar-qualifying release is around the corner. Sideshow & Janus Films secured rights to North American distribution right before Venice started. Surely a date will be revealed soon. In the meantime, watch the new trailer below.
