Japan’s ColorBird Inc., is launching a trio of new titles at TIFFCOM, the rights market that accompanies the Tokyo International Film Festival, and which is this year held online only.
Newest is “Winny,” a fact-based drama film that takes place in the early days of the Internet and sees a software developer wrongfully arrested by the police. The story follows the people who fight the authorities for justice and seek to protect the rights of engineers. The film is directed by the talented young Matsumoto Yusaku with the lead character played by Higashide Masahiro, star of Hamaguchi Ryusuke’s “Asako I&II.” It is set for a March 2023 release in Japan.
Releasing slightly earlier, in January, is “Thorns of Beauty.” The revenge thriller is a remake of Hong Kong director Pang Ho-cheung’s “Beyond our Ken in which two girls fall in love with the same man and forge a secret friendship. It has been reimagined as a modern girls’ movie by popular director Jojo Hideo and a charming cast that includes Matsumoto Honoka, Tamashiro Tina and Watanabe Keisuke. The girls, who start out as love rivals, break into the house of a photographer and start to access his secrets. But they are forced into hiding when he comes home early.
Jojo was director of 2020’s “Around the Edge of the Stand,” “Dangerous Drugs of Sex” (2020) and “Believers.” The last two both played at the Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival in Korea, while “Love Nonetheless” won the best screenplay award at the Udine Far East Film Festival. “Thorns” was co-written with Sawai Kaori (“Just Only Love”).
“Spring In Between” is a romance written and directed by Katsu Rika that was winner of a movie treatment contest held as part of the Kando Cinema Awards. Its story tracks a female magazine editor who struggles through a relationship with a live-in boyfriend and encounters an acclaimed painter, portrayed by Miyazawa Hio, who has communications issues of his own.
ColorBird’s other recent titles include “The End of the Pale Hour,” which released in Japan at the end of 2021, and “What She Likes…” a webnovel-to-film adaptation that played at the 2021 edition of the Busan film festival.