Toei is on board for a modern feature film by Japanese provocateur Takashi Miike and is introducing the film to buyers at this week’s AFM. The fi
Toei is on board for a modern feature film by Japanese provocateur Takashi Miike and is introducing the film to buyers at this week’s AFM. The film, titled Sham, is the director’s first feature based on a work of investigative journalism.
The screenplay is based on a 2007 book by journalist Masumi Fukuda called Fabrication: The Truth About The ‘Murder Teacher’ in Fukuoka. The book details a court case against a teacher who was alleged to have bullied a student to the point of suicide until it came out at trial that the allegations were fabricated – but not before becoming a media sensation.
Fukuda’s account won Japan’s prestigious Shincho Literary Award the year it was published, and has sold 200,000 copies.
Produced by Toei, Sham is currently in post-production after filming in August and September. A release in Japan is planned for next June. Toei describes the film as a “drama crime thriller” and says it “digs deep into humans’ moral zone”; the film’s cast has not yet been revealed.
The prolific Miike has directed more than 100 film, TV and video productions in his career, and his best-known works include Audition, Ichi The Killer and 13 Assassins. He has twice been selected for Cannes Competition: in 2011 with Hara-Kiri: Death Of A Samurai and in 2013 with Shield Of Straw.
The director’s next film, Blue Fight, a feature about two adolescent men who met in a juvenile reformatory participating in a martial arts tournament, will be released in Japanese cinemas in early 2025 via Gaga.
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