Cloud, the film by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, finally in theaters from April 17!
17 March 2025
Cloud (2024) by Kiyoshi Kurosawa hits theaters starting April 17!
FilmClub Distribuzione by Minerva Pictures is finally bringing Cloud by Kiyoshi Kurosawa to Italian cinemas. Premiered at the 81st Venice International Film Festival and at the TIFF, the film has been chosen by Japan as its official submission for the 2025 Academy Awards in the Best International Feature Film category.
Anyone can become prey. A thriller full of suspense that reveals the terrors lurking in our modern society, where evil can break out unexpectedly and uncontrollably. The famous director Kiyoshi Kurosawa has received numerous international accolades, including the Un Certain Regard Best Director Award at the Cannes Film Festival for Journey to the Shore (2015), the Silver Lion at the Venice International Film Festival (Best Director Award) for Wife of a Spy (2020), and the title of Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters from the French government in June 2024.
He now presents this original, elegant, and brutal film, under development since 2018. Its title, Cloud, refers to the nebulous and shapeless internet service that has found its way into our vocabulary in recent years. This thriller, rich in suspense, focuses on a young man of our times who profits from reselling products online: Yoshii, driven by ambition, works as an online reseller. This activity, however, makes him the target of widespread hatred and disgust. Unwittingly, the seeds of hatred he has sown begin to feed in the dark corners of the web, resentment coagulates, swells, and eventually degenerates into a sinister mass frenzy.
Wavering wind like a living being, flickering lights, chilling dialogue, a disused factory brimming with tension, car scenes that make striking use of rear projection, and much more… In Cloud, the unique worldview that emerges from Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s works—reverently described by fans as “Kiyoshi-ism”—is refined even further. The first half of the film deliberately delivers hard-boiled suspense, while the second half offers substantial, raw action, engaging viewers with a subtle, carefully planned buildup. In 2001, when the infiltration of the internet into our daily lives was in its early stages, Kurosawa depicted in his film Pulse (2001) the digital terrors of the web as a conduit for otherworldly spirits, sending shockwaves around the globe. More than 20 years later, online society is amplifying the darkness within us, and we now live in close contact with transparent hostilities such as social media lynchings, defamation, and fake news. By showing the horror of the madness incubated on the internet reaching a tipping point and erupting into reality, Cloud portrays the chaos of Japan and the rest of today’s world.
Synopsis
Ryosuke Yoshii (Masaki Suda) works at a small factory and earns money as a reseller under the pseudonym Ratel. He trades in medical devices, bags, figurines… Buys cheap, sells high: that’s all there is to it. Muraoka (Masataka Kubota), a high school classmate from technical school who taught Yoshii the tricks of the reselling trade, approaches him with a potentially lucrative proposal, but Yoshii turns it down to keep pursuing this morally questionable yet lucrative business. For Yoshii, making money is the only thing that matters. He even rejects a promotion from his boss, Takimoto (Yoshiyoshi Arakawa), ending his three years of service by resigning on the spot. He rents a lakeside house outside the city for both living and work purposes and starts a new life with his girlfriend, Akiko (Kotone Furukawa). With the help of Sano (Daiken Okudaira), a local young man hired as an assistant, his reselling business seems to be thriving—until unsettling incidents begin occurring around him. Suspicious vehicles lurking nearby, a broken window, shadows prowling around, and malevolent online presences. A whirlwind of negativity that will lead him to destruction.