Drive My Car and Evil Does Not Exist director Ryusuke Hamaguchi is heading west for a French-Japanese co-production.
When Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car (pictured) won the Oscar for Best International Feature Film in 2021, it ensured that the Japanese director’s next film would be on the radar of a much larger audience. That film, Evil Does Not Exist, released in 2023 to further acclaim, telling the story of a father and daughter whose Japanese village becomes the target for a new camping site. The film didn’t travel quite as widely as its predecessor, but those who did see it – including our own James Harvey – were left spellbound.
This year will see Hamaguchi’s next project move into gear, and thanks to World Of Reel, we have a few details about it. Titled Our Apprenticeship, the events focus ‘on a Japanese girl studying in Paris.’ That’s all we have to go on in terms of plot, but we do know that production is set to begin imminently, so there’s a chance we’ll see this film arrive this year.
Read more: Evil Does Not Exist review | A beautiful, deceptively furious ode to the environment
France is, of course, home to one of cinema’s most prodigious waves of filmmaking talent, and the country has always displayed a great reverence for auteur filmmakers. Hamaguchi surely falls within that bracket, and so it’s no surprise that he’s opted to work in such a filmmaker-friendly climate. France’s system of tax breaks and grants for productions located in its borders will surely make the project more financially feasible.
Hamaguchi’s films aren’t always the most high-profile, they can be sought out, and we’d imagine that Our Apprenticeship will see the inside of some UK cinemas when it eventually emerges, even if you have to cast your net a little wider to find it playing on your locality.
We’ll bring you more on this on Our Apprenticeship as we get it, although it will likely be in the latter half of this year.
