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Austin-based filmmakers, David & Nathan Zellner have written, produced, directed và appeared in numerous award-winning shorts & feature films for more than a decade.
Bạn đang xem: Kumiko, the treasure hunter
The Zellners have been a force on the festival circuit dating back to the 2005 short film Flotsam/Jetsam, their first film to lớn premiere at Sundance. Other notable shorts by the Zellners -- all of which have played at Sundance -- include the acclaimed Aftermath on Meadowlark Lane & Sasquatch Birth Journal 2.
Goliath, their first feature film, premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival & was distributed theatrically by IFC Films, followed by KID-THING, a fable-like drama starring Sydney Aguirre and Susan Tyrell, which premiered at Sundance in 2012 and internationally at the 62nd Berlinale. KID-THING received a 2012 Gotham Award nomination and was distributed theatrically around the world and domestically in the US by Factory 25.
The Zellners" latest film Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter starring Rinko Kikuchi premiered in the U.S. Dramatic Competition at Sundance năm trước and internationally at the 64th Berlinale. It was nominated for two Independent Spirit Awards (Best Actress and Best Director) và will be distributed by Amplify Releasing in 2015.
Much of their work can be viewed a zellnerbros.com.
Rinko followed up her success with a number of highly acclaimed international films such as Rian Johnson’s The Brothers Bloom (2008), with Adrien Brody và Rachel Weisz; Isabel Coixet’s Map of the Sounds of Tokyo (2009), with Serge Lopez; Mikael Håfström’s Shanghai (2010), with John Cusack and Ken Watanabe; & Anh Hung Tran’s Norwegian Wood (2010), a highly anticipated adaptation of Haruki Murakami’s international bestselling novel of the same name.
Rinko hails from Hadano, Japan, & is a skilled sword fighter as well as an accomplished motorcyclist and horseback rider. In 2007, she was named one of Variety’s 10 Actors lớn Watch.
The Octopus Project has been releasing joyous buổi tiệc nhỏ music since 2002, all the while touring the world both on their own, as handpicked tư vấn for artists as diverse as Aesop Rock, DEVO, and Explosions in the Sky, and playing festivals such as Coachella, Lollapalooza và All Tomorrow"s Parties. Their music has been used in numerous commercials, for brands including: Nike, Apple, Absolut Vodka, và Go
Pro. They"ve scored a handful of films as well, including the Zellner Bro s award-winning KID-THING. In 2013, The Octopus Project released their fifth full-length album, Fever Forms, to great acclaim.
Listen to lớn more of their work at theoctopusproject.com.
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CAMERON LAMB Producer
In November 2008, Cameron Lamb established Lila 9th Productions. The mandate was lớn source material for development và packaging that could be seen through fruition to lớn a delivered property that has significant opportunity for world wide theatrical distribution. The first property was produced in January 2010, titled Daydream Nation, written & directed by Mike Goldbach, staring Kat Dennings (Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist), Josh Lucas (Sweet trang chủ Alabama) và Andie Mac
Dowell. After the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival, it was acquired và released theatrically in 2011 by Anchor Bay.
Cameron’s follow up feature film, Syrup, based on Max Barry’s international bestseller, was in partnership with Academy Award winning producer Barrie M. Osborne (The Lord Of The Rings, Matrix). The film stars, Amber Heard (Rum Diary), Kellan Lutz (Twilight, Immortals), Shiloh Fernandez (Red Riding Hood), & Kirstie Alley. Syrup was released theatrically by Magnolia Pictures in 2013.
CHRIS OHLSON Producer
Most recently, Chris executive produced Good Night and produced Thank You a Lot, both of which had their World Premieres at the SXSW Film Festival, in 2013 và 2014, respectively.
Previously, Chris produced John Bryant’s The Overbrook Brothers, which premiered in the Narrative Competition at the 2009 SXSW Film Festival & was acquired by IFC Films. Ohlson also executive produced Paul Gordon’s award-winning The Happy Poet, which screened at more than 40 festivals worldwide, including The Venice Film Festival’s Venice Days, & he served as a co-producer on Bryan Poyser’s Lovers of Hate, which world premiered at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival & was released by IFC Films. His physical production credits includes Mitch Schultz’s DMT: The Spirit Molecule, Nanette Burstein’s American Teen, Kevin Triplett’s Blaze Foley: Duct Tape Messiah, Mari Marchbanks’ Fall to lớn Grace và Jacob Vaughn’s The Cassidy Kids.
Chris recently won the 2015 Independent Spirit Piaget Producers Award. He is a former Sundance Institute Creative Producing Fellow, as well as an alum of the IFP Narrative Filmmaker Labs & the Rotterdam Cine
Mart Labs.
SEAN PORTER Director of Photography
In năm trước Sean was listed as one of Filmmaker’s “25 New Faces of Independent Cinema” as well as one of Indiewire’s “10 Cinematographers to lớn Watch.” Recently Sean lensed Green Room by the acclaimed director of Blue Ruin, Jeremy Saulnier. Previously, Sean collaborated with Eliza Hittman on It Felt lượt thích Love, which screened at Sundance, Rotterdam, London, Germany & in Milan where it was nominated for best cinematography. The film won Best Narrative in Memphis, the “Best of Fest” award in Nashville, và multiple other awards internationally. In 2012 Sean photographed Megan Griffiths" Eden, which took Audience Awards at SXSW, San Diego & Milan. Eden stars Jamie Chung, Matt O’Leary và Beau Bridges. Innovative Artists reps Sean"s feature và commercial work.
Inspired, disquietingly enough, by an urban legend, “Kumiko The Treasure Hunter” does not wear the outlandishness of its premise on its sleeve. Rather, this new film from the Zellner brothers—writer Nathan & co-writer and director David, both of whom also act—plays out as a deliberate, somber character study that semi-eerily morphs into comedy of middle-American manners and then into something else again.
The title of the movie seems to promise adventure, and the movie does deliver that, though not in the conventional manner. Despite an opening sequence in which a VHS cassette tape is unearthed in an exotic context, Kumiko, portrayed in a startlingly sustained performance by Rinko Kikuchi (“Babel,” “Pacific Rim”) is a not-so-young-anymore woman in today’s Tokyo whose imaginative life is far more vivid than her day-to-day reality. “I am lượt thích a Spanish conquistador,” she explains at one point to lớn a curious library security guard. You’d never know given her day to day routine, which involves making weak tea for a boss khủng too lazy to fire her (at least for a while), ineffectually feeding her pet rabbit Bunzo, & watching và re-watching a videocassette of the Coen brothers’ classic film “Fargo.” Kumiko, fixating on the opening title text that pegs the movie as “a true story,” is convinced that the suitcase full of money buried by one of that film’s characters is at the Minnesota-North Dakota border for the taking of anyone intrepid enough to lớn seek it.
In the movie’s opening forty minutes or so, the filmmakers use relatively conventional means lớn convey the sadness of Kumiko’s depressive state & directionless life. A perfunctory dressing-down from a boss, an on-the-street encounter with an all-too-perky friend from a prior time in Kumiko’s life, a hectoring phone call from Kumiko’s mom. A series of life-fractures—including an awkward và eventually mordantly funny breakup with the aforementioned rabbit—set Kumiko on a course to the U.S.A., where relatively conventional ideas of quirkiness are applied to lớn the various American characters, beginning right off the bat at a Minnesota airport, where Kumiko, who barely speaks English, is waylaid by an odd couple of “tourist consultants” (Nathan Zellner and Brad Prather) who are also religious proselytizers. As she sets off into the freezing weather—conditions that make the movie “Fargo” itself look more like “To Catch A Thief”—Kumiko runs into a host of other Lonely People, including an older woman who tries to interest her in James Clavell’s “Shogun,” a bus driver who apologizes that his Carpal Tunnel Syndrome makes it impossible for him to change a bus flat, và a friendly cop (David Zellner) who tries khổng lồ convince her that “Fargo” is indeed just a movie, even as he contemplates the remote possibility of initiating some kind of romance with her.
The movie tries lớn compensate a bit for the familiarity of these characters by showing real patience in presenting them—the strategy being lớn show the poignancy behind the oddness. The results are mixed; I think any viewer who doesn’t hook into this movie’s worldview right off the bat is going khổng lồ find the going glacial rather than compassionately exploratory. Also potentially alienating is the movie’s turn into Lynchian territory for the film’s finale. It doesn’t come off as cruel, precisely, but there’s at the very least a sense of evasion at work. In the plus column, the movie is beautifully composed và shot, with a lot of smartly evocative images (I was particularly taken by the rendering of a plane’s de-icing as a kind of freezing hellscape). & finally, Kikuchi’s performance, which is a marvel of concentration và craft. As beautiful as ever, she’s nonetheless drained her gaze of any suggestion of coquettishness, investing her character with a haunted chất lượng that, as the saying goes, howls in the bones of her face.
Glenn Kenny
Glenn Kenny was the chief film critic of Premiere magazine for almost half of its existence. He has written for a host of other publications and resides in Brooklyn. Read his answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here.
