Following its world premiere at the Annecy International Animation Festival in 2022, Modern Films is bringing director, composer & painter Pierre Földes’ debut feature film Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman to cinemas across the U.K. and Ireland. The animated Haruki Murakami adaptation is set to release on February 17.
Inspired by a collection of short stories by international best-selling Japanese author Murakami (Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman; The Elephant Vanishes; After the Quake), Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman is set in Tokyo, a few days after the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, and follows the existential repercussions of the natural disaster on the lives of multiple characters as they navigate a seismic event both real and internal.
Kyoko (Shoshana Wilder) suddenly leaves her husband after spending five days in a row glued to unfolding earthquake footage on TV. Her helpless husband Komura (Ryan Bommarito) takes a week’s leave from work and heads north to deliver a box and its unknown contents to two young women. His colleague Katagiri (Marcelo Arroyo), a simple debt collector by profession and an awkward loner in life, returns home one evening to find a two-meter-tall frog (Földes) asking for his help to save Tokyo from impending destruction by a giant subterranean worm.
Through memories, dreams and fantasies, Kyoko, Komura and Katagiri, influenced by their visions of earthquakes — which are manifested as evil willow trees, giant earthworms, secret vows, mysterious boxes and a dark, endless corridor — attempt to rediscover their true selves.
Featuring a blended animation technique incorporating live-action footage, 3D motion capture and traditional 2D animation layouts, the film’s visual style lends itself Murakami’s surreal imagery, while the original score composed by the film’s French-English director Földes carries viewers through the characters’ discovery of deep truths about loneliness, purpose and humanity.
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman also features the voices of Scott Humphrey (Sasaki) and Arthur Holden (Mr. Suzuki). Földes wrote and directed the film, with Olivier Tanguy (head of productions at Miyu Productions) as line producer.
The movie is produced by Cinéma Defacto and Miyu Prod. (France) in coproduction with Studio MA (France), micro_scope (Canada), An Original Picture (Netherlands), Doghouse Films (Luxembourg), Production l’Unité Centrale (Canada), Arte France Cinéma and Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Cinéma. International sales by The Match Factory.
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman was awarded the Jury Distinction for feature film at Annecy and has been an official selection at Toronto, Busan, Ghent and Sao Paulo. Ahead of the theatrical release, the film will make its U.K. premiere introduced by Földes at BFI Southbank on Feb. 6, and will screen during Leeds Film on Feb. 8.
More information and updates about screening engagements in the U.K. & Ireland can be found at modernfilms.com/blindwillow.
