Midnight Screenings 2016 / Ai amu a hiro / Japan 2015
Hideo Suzuki once had big dreams of becoming a famous manga artist, but instead he slaves away as an assistant illustrator at a small publishing house. But everything changes when Tokyo is beset with an unknown virus that causes the inhabitants to turn into zombies. Diffident Hideo had better take his life into his own hands and become a hero.
Hideo is over 30 and he’s still just an assistant manga artist. After years of waiting for a better life, his girlfriend loses patience and throws him out of the apartment. Later, while trying to reconcile, she – like most of the rest of Tokyo – turns into a zombie. Hideo leaves town and sets out in search of what’s left of civilization, his only companion a sporting shotgun and, eventually, the girl Hiromi whom he’s determined to save. After finding a community of survivors holed up on the fortified roof of a shopping center, the pair discover that here, too, “might makes right.” Even when faced with the zombie apocalypse, however, Hideo refuses to abandon the rules of civilization, and he launches into a lonely battle to save Hiromi. But first he needs to find courage and his self-esteem… This exquisite genre picture, based on the manga series of the same name by Kengo Hanazawa, is an intelligent comedy about timid artists, zombie athletes, and tough moral choices.
Nikola Paggio
127 min / Color, DCP
Director Shinsuke Sato
/ Screenplay Akiko Nogi
/ Dir. of Photography Taro Kawazu
/ Music Nima Fakhrara
/ Editor Tsuyoshi Imai
/ Art Director Iwao Saito
/ Producer Akihiro Yamauchi
/ Production Toho Co., Ltd.
/ Coproduction Avex Pictures, Shogakukan, Dentsu, WOWOW, Hakuhodo DY Media Partners
/ Cast Yo Oizumi, Kasumi Arimura, Masami Nagasawa
/ Sales Toho Co., Ltd.
Shinsuke Sato (b. 1970, Hiroshima, Japan), director, screenwriter, and videogame designer, graduated from Musashino Art University in Tokyo. He has made several animated films based on comics, including The Princess Blade (Shura Yukihime, 2001), Oblivion Island: Haruka and the Magic Mirror (Hottarake no shima: Haruka to mahō no kagami, 2009), and GANTZ (2010). The feature Library Wars (Toshokan sensô, 2013) and its sequel were based on novels for teenagers that combine action, romance, and comedy. I Am a Hero, drawn from an award-winning horror manga that is well-known in Europe, also presents an elaborate combination of themes. Sato is currently in preproduction on Death Note 2016, a feature-film treatment of the manga series and later TV show “Death Note,” hugely popular around the world.
Toho Co., Ltd.
1-2-2 Yurakucho, 100-8415, Tokyo
Japan
Phone: +81 335 913 530
Fax: +81 335 916 610
E-mail: [email protected]
Sae Nakazawa
Cinema Representative, Sales Agent
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