CLOUD
Venice 81 – Out of Competition
world premiere
Id., Japan, 2024. Directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa. Starring Masaki Suda, Kotone Furukawa, Masataka Kubota. Running time 2h 4′.
Cloud deserves the midnight screening in the Sala Grande. Kiyoshi Kurosawa was one of the founders and most outstanding exponents of J-horror (with titles such as Cure, 1997, and Pulse, 2001). Cloud, the new feature of the prolific Japanese director, selected Out of Competition at Venice 81, ranges across genres, including gangster movies, with lyrical and comic elements. The protagonist is Ryosuke Yoshii (played by singer, actor and dubbing artist Masaki Suda, one of the original voices of Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron ), who makes a living by reselling objects on the Internet under the nickname ‘Ratel’. But things start to go very wrong when a wave of online hatred hits him. The appearance of a mysterious masked man will make him realise that he has stumbled into a dangerous criminal intrigue.
The filmmaker returns to the Lido Festival after winning the Silver Lion for Best Director in 2020 with Wife of Spy, which told the story of a Japanese during World War II. Before that, Kurosawa had been in Venice with Barren Illusion (1999), Chastisement (2006) and the miniseries Penance (2012). Kurosawa also won the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival for Tokyo Sonata (2008).