Japan’s Cannes Pics ‘Broker,’ ‘Plan 75’ Mark New Trend in Biz

variety.com:

Mark Schilling Japan CorrespondentThe Japanese film industry has long been notoriously insular, a tendency the pandemic only exacerbated.

As the Hollywood pipeline shut down in 2020, local audiences flocked to local films. In 2021, “Fast & Furious 9” was the only non-Japanese film to break into the year’s box office top 10, in the number 10 slot; in pre-pandemic 2019, six of the 10 highest-earning films were foreign, all from Hollywood.Also, Japanese mainstream films, nearly all of which are based on pre-existing domestic properties, be they comics or TV series, rarely recoup any significant part of their budgets abroad. “The Japanese film industry has been self-sustaining and self-sufficient for decades, so selling overseas was never a necessity,” says producer Jason Gray, who together with wife Eiko Mizuno-Gray runs Tokyo-based production company Loaded Films.

The industry is slowly venturing out of its domestic comfort zone, as indicated by the Japanese-helmed titles at Cannes. One is “Broker,” a competition entry by Kore-eda Hirokazu, winner of the Palme d’Or in 2018 for his “Shoplifters.” Featuring Korean locations and an all-Korean cast headed by Song Kang-ho (“Parasite”), Doona Bae (“Kingdom”) and Gang Dong-Won (“Peninsula”), the film is distributed by Korean giant CJ E&M.It is the second film Kore-eda has shot outside his native Japan, the first being “The Truth,” a 2019 drama starring Catherine Deneuve and Juliette Binoche as a quarreling mother and daughter in Paris.Also, screening in Un Certain Regard is Hayakawa Chie’s “Plan 75,” a Japan-France-Philippines co-production set in a near-future Japan where a government program recruits elderly volunteers for euthanasia to reduce the burgeoning senior citizen.