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Netflix's recent Japanese film The Village reportedly came out on the streaming platform back in April, but the firm made it available for the international audience only now. Directed by Michihito Fujii, The Village is about a man who has to work in a waste disposal site to repay his mother’s debts. However, things change for him when his friend enters his life and extricates him from his predicament.
The synopsis of the new film, as per IMDb, reads:
“Yu Katayama is a young man who lives in the remote, but beautiful village Kamonmura. He has lived there since he was a child and is unable to leave due to an incident in his past. To pay off his mother's debt, Yu works in a garbage disposal facility nearby.”
Katayama, who is an outsider and belongs to a marginalized class, still struggles to make peace with emotional trauma and sad life. The unsolved mystery of his father's death, even after 10 years, and his mother's addiction to alcoholism and gambling weigh heavily on him.
Set in the fictional village of Kamonmura, the fresh launch stars Haru Kuroki, Ryusei Yokohama, Arata Furata, Shido Nakamura, and Wataru Ichinose, among others. Aside from them, the thriller has Ryo Yukizane and Michiaki Tsunoda on the production team.
Netflix's The Village was shot entirely in Japan
Considered a dark fictional dystopia, it has Tomoyuki Kawakami handling the cameras. He has done a commendable job, given the crafty angles and picturesque locations captured in the trailers and other promotional material. Several reports state that The Village team set up camp entirely in Japan. As such, the fictional village of Kamonmura was built in a rural and isolated area of the country.
However, several pivotal interior shots of the two-hour-long movie were filmed and recorded inside one of the studios. The characters of Misaki Nakai, the female protagonist and Katayama's friend who dynamically transforms his life, are based in Tokyo. So, the team set up in the capital and filmed her, establishing her lifestyle in the city. The stark contrast between the plush city and the garbage state of the village surely make for an interesting watch.
Though not confirmed, The Village may have tapped several top filming locations in Tokyo like the Tokyo Tower, Skytree, Shinjuku City, Roppongi Hills, Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden, Odaiba Seaside Park, Hibiya Park, and The National Art Museum of Art, among others.
Tokyo is a go-to production spot for several filmmakers, including Christopher Nolan who has shot Inception (2010) there. Other high-profile ventures like Bullet Train (2022), F9: The Fast Saga (2021), The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006), Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003), The Wolverine (2013), and John Wick 4 (2023), among others, made the capital city their home.
Meanwhile, Netflix got itself a new set of Japanese releases this month, including The Days, which centers around the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, Nobody Knows, touted as a hard-hitting drama about the relationship between four siblings from different fathers, and Still Walking, which deals with a single day affair of a family who has lost their eldest son because of drowning.
The Village is streaming on Netflix currently.
