First Teaser For Koki Mitani's ONCE IN A BLUE MOON

Japanese writer-director Koki Mitani is about to do for the courtroom what he has already done for the theater, the hotel and the movie set. Make it very, very funny.You see, Mitani is an absolute master of the ensemble comedy, a man who thrives on taking large group settings governed by a strict set of rules and then turning them on their ear to fabulous effect. He did it with his script for University of Laughs and as writer-director on The Magic Hour and Suite Dreams and he is very much up to his old tricks in Once In A Blue Moon.

The story here revolves around a low grade lawyer who must rely on the testimony of a 421 year old ghost to clear her client. Yes, a ghost. The feel of the thing is typical Mitani, which is to say that it feels like a classic 1950s, Golden Age Hollywood comedy of errors brought back to fresh and vibrant life.

Mitani is a strange one, a man who is a huge success and a major media figure in his home country - where he bridges several disciplines - but who is barely known outside of Japanese shores. He falls into a sort of nether region for film festival programming where he is openly populist - thus ruling him out of most arthouse festivals - but not at all 'extreme' which means he misses on the genre circuit as well. It's a shame because he's one of the absolute best writer-director's on the planet today.

Check out the teaser below.