Cloud | Kiyoshi Kurosawa

[Cremildo]

As featured in our 2024 preview, he remade his own film with Serpent’s Path, starring Damien Bonnard, Mathieu Amalric, Grégoire Colin, and Ko Shibasaki. Before that feature sets its premiere, his 45-minute thriller Chime will debut at Berlinale this month. Now, a third 2024 film has been unveiled with Cloud.

Screen Daily reports he’s already finished shooting the project, with the first still featured above, and is in the editing process with a Japanese release planned for this September. Backed by Nikkatsu Corporation and Tokyo Theatres Company Inc., the Kurosawa-scripted project stars The Boy and the Heron‘s Masaki Suda as Ryosuke Yoshii, described as “an enigmatic young man who tries to make money by reselling shrewdly obtained goods on the internet under the pseudonym ‘Ratel’.”

“In the obscure corners of modern-day Japan, violent incidents sometimes occur for seemingly no reason whatsoever,” Kurosawa said in a statement. “When the causes are investigated, it becomes apparent that a system of sorts exists through which petty grudges and frustrations are accumulated and blown out of proportion by the internet. I wondered if such a phenomenon would serve as subject matter for an action film and began developing this project.”

He added, “The protagonist is an extremely average man who, through his small-time moneymaking schemes, desires to gain even the slightest advantage over others. In this story, he carelessly incurs the ire of those around him, and ultimately finds himself dragged into a deadly battle with his life on the line.”

With a September release in the works, we wonder if Kurosawa could hit the ultra-rare trifecta of having a film premiere at Berlinale, Cannes, and Venice in one year. +