Not your typical charming teenage movie!
Isn’t Anyone Alive? is the directorial comeback for Sogo Ishii, who recently changed his name to Gakuryu Ishii as a mark of a new beginning, and spent the last years teaching at the Kobe Design University.
It’s an adaptation of an absurdist play of the same name by Shiro Maeda, and according to Ryuganji, it’s ;
An anarchic & darkly comic look at the links between life & death, set at a university where an urban legend is spoken of in hushed tones. Seemingly normal people engage in comically surreal conversations & ‘punk’ goings on as everyday life distorts toward a mysterious finale. A sick woman who slips out of her hospital room, students & a cafe worker in a love triangle, men who witness a major accident, & an ENT doctor with a one-sided crush on a medical clerk.
Director Ishii said during an interview (in french) at the 2010 NIFFF that is new film would inspired by Luis Bunuel’s The Exterminating Angel, but it should be “darker, stranger“. That sounds just like Isn’t Anyone Alive?! Ishii also said that financing indies in Japan was quite tough. Good news is he’s preparing new ambitious projects – an experimental 3D film & a sci-fi movie – but he’s having hard time to get funds.
Starring young promising actor Shota Sometani (was the lead in Sono’s Himizu), Isn’t Anyone Alive? will be released in Japan on February 18th, 2012! The film is coming to the UK towards the end of 2012 @ Third Window Films.
Sources: Official Website, Cinematoday
Thanks to @Ryuganji, @Logboy
AKA Ikiteru Mono Wa Inai No Ka
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