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Japanese sales and distribution company Bitters End has acquired international rights to “All the Lovers in the Night,” Yukiko Sode’s feature adaptation of Mieko Kawakami’s celebrated novel starring Golden Globe winner Tadanobu Asano (“Shōgun”) in a key supporting role.
Japan Academy Prize winner Yukino Kishii (“Small, Slow But Steady,” Berlinale 2022) leads the cast in the project, which marks the first full-length film adaptation of a work by Kawakami. The author’s novel gained international recognition as the first Japanese title shortlisted for the U.S. National Book Critics Circle Award.
The literary sensation tells a love story centered on Fuyuko, a freelance proofreader living in solitude whose carefully ordered life begins to transform after meeting Mitsutsuka, a quiet high school physics teacher.
The film is currently in post-production with a Japanese theatrical release scheduled for later this year.
Sode’s sophomore feature “Aristocrats” (2021) bowed at the International Film Festival Rotterdam before achieving substantial commercial success in France, drawing over 71,000 admissions and cementing the director’s appeal to international audiences.
Bitters End will present the title at Berlin’s European Film Market alongside Riju Go’s screwball romance “Rhapsody, Rhapsody,” starring Issey Takahashi, and Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s upcoming feature “All of a Sudden,” which the company is co-repping with Cinefrance International for the Asian market.
The Tokyo-based company has operated for more than three decades as a major independent player in theatrical distribution, production, and international partnerships. Its distribution portfolio includes titles from Hamaguchi, Bong Joon Ho, the Dardenne brothers, Jia Zhangke, Roy Andersson, and Gianfranco Rosi, with recent releases including “Anora,” “Young Mothers,” “Sex/Love/Dreams,” and “Caught by the Tide.”
On the production side, Bitters End’s credits include the Oscar-winning “Drive My Car” and Sho Miyake’s “Two Seasons, Two Strangers,” which took the Golden Leopard at Locarno.
English (US) ·