Acclaimed Japanese director Lisa Takeba (“The Pinkie,” “Signal 100”) is developing “Children of the River,” a Japan-Italy co-production that explores themes of identity and loss through the story of twin sisters. The project is participating in the Tokyo Gap-Financing Market operated by TIFFCOM, the film market allied to the Tokyo International Film Festival.
This film is scheduled to be shot in the summer of 2025 and is set along the beautiful rivers of Shikoku, located in the southern part of Japan. It tells the story of a summer journey of self-discovery by twin sisters who are young art students. The region is also a Buddhist pilgrimage site, featured in Haruki Murakami’s novels.
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“It’s a story about identity crisis,” Takeba told Variety. “As a twin is a kind of dual identity, if you lost your partner, you lost half of you.”
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The project marks one of the first features to take advantage of the Japan-Italy co-production treaty that came into effect in August. Takeba cites her admiration for Italian cinema, particularly the work of Alice Rohrwacher, as inspiration for the collaboration.
“Both countries have such high culture, and most Japanese admire Italian culture,” said Takeba. “I think this collaboration would be great synergy, like a mirror of Italian post-production and Japanese shooting staff.”
The director plans to approach the film as a “landscape painting,” with the natural environment playing a central role. The film also aims to make a subtle environmental statement through its visual language.
“When the pandemic started, I saw a lot of news through BBC or CNN, most of the visual was really gray color,” Takeba explained. “I want to put quite a different color image, like vivid green. Everyone needs water, not fire. That is also my submersible emotion against global warming.”
The project builds on Takeba’s track record of international collaboration, following “The Horse Thieves” (2019), a Japan-Kazakhstan co-production, co-directed by Yerlan Nurmukhambetov, which opened the Busan International Film Festival.
Italy’s Antropica (“She”) is co-producing the project. “I chose to co-produce this project because is a project has cultural roots imprinted in European culture, through reference to Greek mythology, and furthermore the film tells a universal story through the two protagonists who are twin sisters,” Antropica’s Parsifal Reparato told Variety. “It’s a film rich in spirituality and humankind’s relationship with nature. I am convinced that this film will be able to captivate Italian audiences and more generally Western audiences.
