Japanese sales and distribution company Bitters End has acquired the international rights to “All About the Night Lovers,” an adaptation of Mieko Kawakami’s celebrated novel by Yukiko Amate and starring Golden Globe Award winner Tadanobu Asano (“The Shogun”) in a key supporting role.
Japan Academy Award winner Yukino Kishii (“Small and Slow but Steady” 2022 Berlinale) plays the lead role, and this is the first feature film adaptation of Kawakami’s work. The author’s novel became internationally known as the first Japanese title to be shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
This literary work depicts a love story centered around Fuyuko, a freelance proofreader who lives in solitude, and her carefully ordered life begins to change when she meets Mitsuka, a quiet high school physics teacher.
The film is currently in post-production and is scheduled for theatrical release in Japan later this year.
After bowing at the Rotterdam International Film Festival, Saudet’s second feature, The Noble (2021), was a major commercial success in France, attracting more than 71,000 admissions and cementing the director’s appeal to international audiences.
Bitter’s End will screen the title at the European Film Market in Berlin, along with Liju Goh’s screwball romance Rhapsody Rhapsody, starring Issei Takahashi, and Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s new film All of a Sudden, which the company is co-producing with CineFrance International for the Asian market.
The Tokyo-based company has been a leading independent company in theatrical distribution, production and international partnerships for more than 30 years. The company’s distribution portfolio includes titles by Hamaguchi, Bong Joon Ho, the Dardenne brothers, Jia Zhangke, Roy Andersson, and Gianfranco Rosi, and recent releases include “Anora,” “Young Mothers,” “Sex/Love/Dreams” and “Caught by the Tide.”
Production-wise, Bitter’s End’s credits include the Oscar-winning Drive My Car and Sho Miyake’s Two Seasons, Two Strangers, which won a Golden Leopard at Locarno.
