Sony Pictures Classics to release Ayase Haruka's "Umimachi Diary" in the US
The entertainment trade website Variety is reporting on Thursday that Sony Pictures Classics has acquired the U.S. distribution rights for Hirokazu Kore-eda's Our Little Sister film. The film adapts Akimi Yoshida's (Banana Fish) Umimachi Diary manga.
The film is competing at the Cannes Film Festival in France, and will screen there on Thursday night. The festival is being held from May 13-24.
The story of the film takes place in Kamakura, and revolves around Yoshino, the middle of three sisters. One morning, after she wakes up in a man's room, her father's obituary is delivered to her. Yoshino hadn't met her father in a long time, since her mother divorced him. After not seeing him for so long, she doesn't know how to feel at the announcement of his death. Only at her father's funeral do the sisters meet their half-sister whom they had never met.
The film stars:
Haruka Ayase as Sachi, the eldest sister
Masami Nagasawa as Yoshino, the second sister
Kaho as Chika, the third sister
Suzu Hirose as Suzu, the youngest sister
Shinobu Ōtake as Miya Sasaki
Shinichi Tsutsumi as Kazuya Shiina
Ryō Kase as Minami Sakashita
Jun Fubuki as Sachiko Ninomiya
Lily Franky as Sen'ichi Fukuda
Ōshirō Maeda as Fūta Ozaki
Ryōhei Suzuki as Yasuyuki Inoue
Takafumi Ikeda as Sanzō Hamada
Kentarō Sakaguchi as Tomoaki Fujii
Kore-eda previously directed Still Walking and Like Father, Like Son.
The film will premiere in Japan on June 13.
The Umimachi Diary (Seaside Town Diary) manga is a crossover with Yoshida's 1995 Lovers' Kiss manga, which was adapted into a live-action film in 2003. Umimachi Diary began serialization in flowers in 2006, and Shogakukan shipped the fifth compiled volume of the manga in December 2012. The manga was a nominee for the 11th Cultural Affairs Media, Art, & Manga Award, and it won the 2013 Manga Taisho (Cartoon Grand Prize) award.
Source: AnimeNewsNetwork