Deborah François explores Kobe’s ghosts in Memories Corner
Final preparations are underway before shooting starts in Japan on January 17 on Audrey Fouché’s debut feature, Memories Corner. This fantasy romance will depart from the traditional imagery of the Japanese ghost by turning it into a love story.
The cast will be headed by Belgian actress Deborah François (Best Female Newcomer Cesar 2009 for The First Day of the Rest of Your Life [+see also:
trailer
film profile]), Hiroshi Abe (Still Walking) and Hidetoshi Nishijima.
Penned by the director (winner of the 10th edition of Emergence), the film centres on a French journalist (François) who is sent to Kobe to report on the commemoration ceremonies for the 1995 earthquake. Accompanied by her interpreter, Akira, the young woman will discover a Japan that is unconcerned about the ghosts of its past.
In a building inhabited by former victims of the disaster, she meets a very strange man, Kenji, who introduces her to a Japanese phenomenon known as “Kodoku shi”. The phenomenon appeared in the years following the earthquake and long remained taboo for it mainly affects those people cut off from the rest of society and describes the long solitude of the catastrophe’s victims.
With the authorities preferring to keep silent about these events, every effort will be made to distance the young European woman from Kenji.
Produced by Jérôme Vidal for Noodles Production and co-produced by Canada, Memories Corner has co-production support from France 3 Cinéma, an advance on receipts from the National Film and Moving Image Centre (CNC) and pre-sales from Canal + and Ciné Cinéma.
The mainly French-language film will be shot over six weeks in Japan. French distribution will be handled by Haut et Court and sales will by Films Distribution.
Noodles Production has recently co-produced two Spanish films: Marc Recha’s Little Indi [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (to be released in France on February 10 by Ad Vitam) and Javier Rebollo’s Woman Without Piano [+see also:
trailer
interview: Javier Rebollo, director of…
film profile]; as well as Olivier Abbou’s horror thriller Territories (a French/Canadian co-production in post-production).
(Translated from French)
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