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Takashi Miike to Get Rome Film Fest's Maverick Director Award
posted on by Lynzee Loveridge
The Ninth Rome Film Festival will present director Takashi Miike with its Maverick Director Award during its ceremony next month. The award recognizes "filmmakers who have contributed to the invention of a new, original, and unconventional cinema."
The festival's artistic director, Marco Müller, explained his choice to recognize Miike, "Every one of his films is a breakneck race through an uncannily poetic and surprisingly political imagination. His sense of cinema and the pleasure of filming were already evident in his earliest works (straight-to-video movies and low-budget films); they have effortlessly edged in, despite his current creative speed (three to four films per year), hence his style continues to assert itself each time, both in his adaptation of hit manga and in commissioned films honed to become blockbusters (which reveal moments of extraordinary figurative concentration)."
The festival will also host the world premiere of Miike's newest film, As the Gods Will (Kami-sama no Iu Toori) during its run from October 16-25.
The live-action film adaptation of Muneyuki Kaneshiro and Akeji Fujimura's horror-survival manga begins when strange and frightening things start happening at Shun Takahata's high school. After his teacher is killed, he and his classmates must play horrifying games in order to avoid death. The film will also feature two new "games" not featured in the original work: The fifth game, "I hate liars," which is lead by a polar bear, and the fourth game, "Can you play 'kick the can'?," which is lead by a Russian nesting doll.
The cast includes Sōta Fukushi (live-action Library Wars/Toshokan Sensō) as Shun Takahata, Hirona Yamazaki (Lesson of the Evil, Kyō, Koi o Hajimemasu) as Shun's childhood friend Ichika Akimoto, Ryunosuke Kamiki (Summer Wars, Howl's Moving Castle, Rurouni Kenshin: Kyoto Taika-hen) as Shun's violence-loving classmate Takeru Amaya, and Mio Yūki (live-action Hakuba no Ōji-sama, Flying Goldfish & the Secret of the World) as Shōko Takase.
The film will premiere in Japan on November 15.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
