Enter a Nightmare When The World of Kanako Arrives in December
Drafthouse Films is preparing the North American release of director Tetsuya Nakashima’s (Kamikaze Girls, Confessions) latest thriller, festival sensation and provocative Japanese box office hit The World of Kanako, on December 4th.
The film will be simultaneously released in select theaters, as well as available via multiple digital VOD platforms including Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vimeo, VHX, and more. A home video release on Blu-ray and DVD is slated for early 2016.
Based on a 2005 novel by Akio Fukamachi, often deemed unfilmable due to the lurid nature of the narrative, and drawing comparisons to groundbreaking Asian cinema genre classics such as Kim Jee-woon’s I Saw the Devil, Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy, and Takashi Miike’s Ichi the Killer, The World of Kanako is an expertly crafted, relentless sledgehammer to the senses. Critical and popular response to the film in Japan prompted Nakashima to release a statement which helped audiences understand the “grotesque” nature of the film.
In The World of Kanako, broken ex-detective Akikazu (the prolific Kôji Yakusho; 13 Assassins, Babel, Shall We Dance?) searches for his missing teenage daughter (newcomer Nana Komatsu), only to discover that she may not be the person who he once thought she was. Kanako is Nakashima’s ninth feature, following the highly acclaimed and equally devastating Confessions, Japan’s submission to the 2011 Academy Awards.
The World of Kanako had its North American premiere at Toronto International Film Festival in 2014 and has played multiple regional festivals since, including Austin’s Fantastic Fest. Drafthouse Films COO James Emanuel Shapiro believes that the timing was key for the upcoming release: “It’s a Christmas movie for those who require a dose of Asian extreme in their holiday cheer.”
Synopsis:
An uncompromising revenge thriller of operatic scope, The World of Kanako is a non-stop visual and emotional assault to the senses as it follows troubled ex-detective Akikazu (Yakusho) on the hunt for his missing teenage daughter, Kanako. What he discovers in his search is an unsettling and harrowing web of depravity–surrounding both Kanako and himself. As Akikazu stumbles along a shocking trail of drugs, sex, and violence, he finds himself woefully unprepared for the revelations that affect all he holds dear.
Directed by Tetsuya Nakashima, The World of Kanako is an astonishing tour de force of mystery, beauty, and boundary-pushing violence. A wildly kinetic and startlingly venomous throwback to the best that Asian extreme cinema has to offer, The World of Kanako offers a trip right up to the edge of a man’s private hell––and over it.
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