Two films in a single year would qualify as an unusually prolific stretch for almost any filmmaker, but Japanese auteur Hirokazu Kore-eda has never been one to remain idle for long. After premiering his science-fiction family drama “Sheep in the Box” at Cannes earlier this year, the “Shoplifters” filmmaker will bring another new feature to the fall festival circuit. His live-action adaptation of Tatsuki Fujimoto’s “Look Back” will make its North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival this September.
That distinction will matter to festival heads and surely means its world premiere will be at the Venice or Telluride Film Festivals or both.
Natsuki Deguchi and Aju Makita, who previously appeared together in Kore-eda’s Netflix series “The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House,” star as Fujino and Kyomoto, two girls whose contrasting personalities are bridged by a shared devotion to drawing manga. Furi Nanase and Rokka Okada play their younger counterparts, with Masaki Suda, Kankurō Kudō, Kayo Noro, Ryō Ikeda, Miyu Sasaki, and Maho Yamada rounding out the cast.
Here’s the official synopsis:
The overly confident Fujino and the shut-in Kyomoto couldn’t be more different, but a love of drawing manga brings these two small-town girls together.
Kore-eda wrote, directed, and edited the adaptation, which was shot on 35mm in Nikaho City in northern Japan. Senzo Ueno served as cinematographer, Yuta Bandoh composed the score, and Daiju Koide produced through K2 Pictures.
First published in 2021, Fujimoto’s manga previously inspired Kiyotaka Oshiyama’s acclaimed 2024 animated film. Kore-eda’s version marks the first live-action adaptation of a work by the “Chainsaw Man” creator. The director has said he read the manga in a single sitting and recognized in it the same urgent creative necessity that drove him to make “Nobody Knows.”
K2 Pictures will release “Look Back” in Japan on September 11. GKIDS holds theatrical distribution rights in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and Ireland, with a specific domestic release date still to come. Watch the trailer below.
Born in Chile, raised in Canada, now living in Brooklyn, NY, Rodrigo Perez is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Playlist, which he launched in 2007. He has worked in entertainment journalism since 2000, including at MTV, and has written for SPIN, IndieWire, Pitchfork, Complex, Magnet, MuchMusic, and various music, film, and entertainment publications over the past two decades.
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