Third Window Acquires SAWAKO DECIDES For Theatrical and Home Video

Our friends at Third Window Films are happy to announce their latest acquisition: Sawako Decides.  The film played to very appreciative audiences this year at Camera Japan in Rotterdam, Fantasia in Montreal, and the New York Asian Film Festival.  It was named as an honorable mention in our own Ben Umstead's Best Of 2010 list, as well as many others around the world.  Here is what Third Window has to say about their latest exciting film:

Third Window Films is pleased to announce the acquisition of Yuya Ishii's 'Sawako Decides' starring 'Kakera' and 'Love Exposure' actress Hikari Mitsushima. Will our upcoming releases of 2011 looking a little 'darker' with Nakashima's 'Confessions', Sion Sono's 'Cold Fish' and Gen Takahashi's 'Confessions of a Dog', we want to balance our output with something a little 'lighter' in our attempt to continue to show the wide variety of films coming out from Japan each year. 'Sawako Decides' has, along our other 3 planned releases of 2011, been mentioned in countless 'Best Films of 2010' polls, so we are very happy to add this to our catalogue and present it to the UK market theatrically in the Summer of 2011 with a DVD release 2 months after.

Tony Rayns synopsis for the London Film Festival:

From the opening colonic irrigation scene, immediately followed by an episode in a Tokyo office where wretched new toys are being tested on spoilt-brat infants, it's clear that Sawako Decides will be one of the more unusual Japanese films of the year. In fact, in a year in which the creativity in Japanese mainstream cinema all but curled up and died, it's a real stand-out: a joyous, nuanced, comic drama about female empowerment. Sawako, superbly played by young star Hikari Mitsushima, soon leaves behind her humiliating job in Tokyo to move back to her rural hometown. Her father is ill and his business (packing freshwater clams) is going belly-up. But the elderly female workforce resents and despises her, her hopeless boyfriend (a divorcé with a young daughter and a knitting habit) tracks her down, and Sawako begins to despair of ever making sense of her life. Yuya Ishii, who has risen from the rank of indie maverick to major talent in just five years, makes Sawako's big decision both a credible narrative twist and an occasion for cheers from the audience.

Sounds like another quality release from Third Window, I'm looking forward to seeing it!