One of the notable films just about to announce its theatrical release plans before COVID-19 arrived was We Are Little Zombies, a Sundance hit last year where it picked up the World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award. Directed by Makoto Nagahisa, the kinetic debut feature follows four orphans who band together to make music to heal. Ahead of a release later in 2020 from Oscilloscope Laboratories, the first trailer has landed.
Dan Mecca said in our Sundance review, “The sheer amount of style that writer/director Makoto Nagahisa shows off in We Are Little Zombies is impressive. Aesthetically, there is a lot going on here. Four children–Hikari, Ikuko, Ishi, and Takemura–meet and befriend each other in the days after they’ve all been orphaned. In their grief and confusion, they form a rock band. They call themselves “Little Zombies” in reference to their collective inability to show much sadness given the circumstance.”
See the trailer and poster below, plus a coloring book here.
When four young orphans—Hikari, Ikuko, Ishi, and Takemura—first meet, their parents’ bodies are being turned into dust, like fine Parmesan atop a plate of spaghetti Bolognese, and yet none of them can shed a tear. They are like zombies; devoid of all emotion. With no family, no future, no dreams, and no way to move forward, the young teens decide that the first level of this new existence involves salvaging a gaming console, an old electric bass, and a charred wok from their former homes—just enough to start a band-and then conquer the world. Tragedy, comedy, music, social criticism, and teenage angst are all subsumed in this eccentric cinematic tsunami.
We Are Little Zombies will arrive later this year.