After breaking out with his 2016 film ‘Happy Hour’, Ryūsuke Hamaguchi returned in 2018 with what he described as his first “commercial film,” ‘Asako I and II’, as opposed to smaller, independent production. Adapted from a Haruki Murakami short story, ‘Drive My Car’ is Hamaguchi’s current “commercial” project, while the smaller-scale Berlinale 2021 premiere ‘Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy’ is his smaller, independent film.

The film stars Nishijima Hidetoshi (“Creepy”) as a stage actor and director happily married to his playwright wife (Kirishima Reika). Then one day the wife disappears and, two years later, the hero is appointed the director of a theater festival in Hiroshima. There he is assigned a mostly silent young woman chauffeur (Miura Toko), an encounter with more significance than he at first expects.

Check out the first image and poster below:

Leading indie distributor Bitters End will release the film in Japan sometime this summer. The number of screens has yet to be decided.

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