With Cannes Film Festival now just around the corner, updates are coming in for our most-anticipated cinematic event of the year. The Un Certain Regard––which has now confirmed its full jury with Andréa Arnold (President), Mounia Meddour, Elsa Zylberstein, Daniel Burman, and Michael Covino––has unveiled its opening night film.
Arthur Harari’s Onoda – 10 000 Nights In The Jungle will premiere on the first night of the festival. Shot in Japanese, this international coproduction tells the story of the soldier Hiroo Onoda that was sent to an island in the Philippines in 1944, to fight against the American offensive. As Japan surrenders, Onoda ignores it, trained to survive at all costs in the jungle, he keeps his war going. He will take 10 000 days to capitulate, refusing to believe the end of the Second World War.
As the Cannes synopsis reads, “Between Kon Ichikawa’s Fires on the Plain, Josef von Sternberg’s Anatahan and They Were Expendable of John Ford, with lighting by Tom Harari, the director’s brother, Onoda – 10 000 Nights In The Jungle is a staggering internal odyssey, an intimate and universal view of the world and the history. With this second feature film (and his first in the Cannes selection), Arthur Harari masterfully imposes his filmmaking and delivers a great film about commitment and time.”
Starring Endō Yūya, Tsuda Kanji, Matsuura Yūya, Chiba Tetsuya, Katō Shinsuke, Inowaki Kai, and Ogata Issey, check out the trailer and poster below ahead of a Cannes premiere on July 7 and a French release on July 21.
