Asian Cinema releases for March

It's time for the first March film announcements and we have two so far; one hitting our cinemas and the other bound for home release.

Acclaimed director Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Cloud, which was selected as Japan’s entry for Best International Feature Film at the 97th Oscars will be getting a cinematic release on 25th April. Let's hope his latest digital horror will be hitting a cinema near you.

It's easy to almost take for granted that another month means another Radiance release and June brings us another Tai Kato release to boot, The Tale of Oiwa's Ghost, which is his version of the Ghost Story of Yotsuya that was released in their previous and excellent Daiei Gothic boxset.

What - there's more!? But you said two films. True but then I saw Seijun Suzuki's A Tale of Sorrow and Sadness that will soon be released by Radiance is also getting a couple of showings at the Prince Charles Cinema in May and June. Guess what I'll do be doing the next few seconds? Details here!

Want to know more? Excellent. Synopses as standard shamelessly 'borrowed' from their respective distributors.

Cloud

Ryosuke Yoshi (Masaki Suda, The Boy and the Heron) works at a small factory and makes money on the side as a reseller operating under the pseudonym “Ratel.” He deals in medical devices, handbags, figurines... Anything he can flip to make a profit. Buy low, sell high - that’s all there is to it.

After renting a lakeside house outside the city, and starting a new life with his girlfriend, Akiko (Kotone Furukawa, Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy) and new assistant Sano (Daiken Okudaira), Yoshi’s reselling schemes appear to be going from strength to strength until unsettling incidents begin occurring consecutively around him. Suspicious vehicles roaming his vicinity, a broken window, stalking shadows, and online malice... A negative spiral of animosity gathers momentum, eventually taking physical form as a sinister mob of ex-victims organise. Their target is Yoshii, whose oblivious existence is rapidly torn apart...

The Tale of Oiwa's Ghost

When the daughter of an elite family takes a shine to poor samurai Iemon (Tomisaburo Wakayama, Lone Wolf and Cub), he sees an opportunity to climb the social ladder. He just needs to rid himself of his only obstacle: his loving wife Oiwa. He poisons her and dumps her corpse in a nearby swamp, but she returns as a horribly disfigured ghost to haunt Iemon on his wedding night. Crime film specialist Tai Kato (I, the Executioner) brings the famous Ghost Story of Yotsuya to the screen as a gritty tale of murder and greed, with an intense lead performance by Wakayama (The Bounty Hunter Trilogy, Big Time Gambling Boss).