The World of Kanako Is Not What It Seems!

“A gritty, propulsive revenge thriller … critics pick!”

“Gleefully, utterly insane … testament to the fact that Nakashima is a true artist.”

A broken ex-detective searches for his missing teenage daughter, only to discover – while following a shocking trail of drugs, sex and violence – that she may not be the person he thought she was. The World of Kanako, filmmaker Tetsuya Nakashima’s pulsing tale of murder and revenge, comes to Blu-ray and DVD on February 2, 2016, from Drafthouse Films, in conjunction with Cinedigm (NASDAQ: CIDM). The acclaimed new masterpiece of extreme Asian cinema is also currently available for Digital Download.

Kanako (newcomer Nana Komatsu, Prophecy), a beautiful girl and high-achieving student, mysteriously disappears one day, leaving all her belongings in her room. Her mother asks her ex-husband Akikazu (Kôji Yakusho, 13 Assassins, Babel), a recently fired police detective, to go find their daughter. He starts a desperate (and increasingly unhinged) search in the hope of not just finding Kanako, but also getting his family back together.

An uncompromising revenge thriller of operatic scope, The World of Kanako is a nonstop visual and emotional assault on the senses. What Akikazu discovers as he rampages through his daughter’s world is an unsettling and harrowing web of depravity – surrounding both Kanako and himself. As Akikazu stumbles along he encounters rape, prostitution, the heroin trade and the Yakuza – all while battling his own demons of alcoholism, drugs and domestic abuse. In the midst of the masterfully frenetic and ultraviolent set pieces, Nakashima (Confessions, Kamikaze Girls) creates a psychologically penetrating portrait of a man woefully unprepared for the revelations that will shatter everything he holds dear.

Nakashima’s Confessions was Japan’s submission for the best foreign-language film Academy Award in 2011, and The World of Kanako is an equally astonishing tour de force of mystery, beauty and boundary-pushing violence. A wildly kinetic and startlingly venomous throwback to the best that Asian extreme cinema has to offer, the film offers a trip right up to the edge of a man’s private hell – and beyond it.

The World of Kanako won Best Screenplay-Fantastic Features at the 2014 Austin Film Fest and was nominated for the Audience Choice award at the 2014 Chicago International Film Festival. Star Nana Komatsu won the Newcomer of the Year award at the 2015 Awards of the Japanese Academy, while Kôji Yakusho won the Best Actor prize at the 2014 Sitges – Catalonian International Film Festival.

Drafthouse Films, the film distribution arm of the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, is a curated brand of provocative, visionary and artfully unusual films new and old from around the world. Following the earnestly simple motto of “sharing the films we love with widest audience possible,” Drafthouse Films debuted in 2010 with the theatrical release of Four Lions, which was named of Time Magazine’s “Top 10 Films Of The Year.” Their diverse and unique slate includes the highly-acclaimed, Oscar® nominated documentary The Act Of Killing produced by Errol Morris and Werner Herzog, 2013 SXSW Midnight Audience Award winner Cheap Thrills starring David Koechner (Anchorman), British auteur Ben Wheatley’s psychedelic trip into magic and madness, A Field In England, Ari Folman’s Cannes Film Festival selected sci-fi epic The Congress starring Robin Wright, Harvey Keith, Jon Hamm and Paul Giamatti, Midnight Movie sensations Miami Connection and The Visitor and rediscovered classics Wake in Fright and Ms. 45. Recent and upcoming releases include Dutch thriller Borgman, Michel Gondry’s Mood Indigo, Sundance Award-winning documentaries The Overnighters and the recently acquired Look of Silence, Joshua Oppenheimer’s stunning follow up to The Act of Killing. Drafthouse Films distributes films theatrically, through home video, VOD and their direct-to-consumer platforms integrating into the ever-growing Alamo Drafthouse entertainment lifestyle brand, which along with the Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas includes: Mondo, the collectible art boutique; Fantastic Fest, the largest international genre film festival in the US; and the pop culture website Birth.Movies.Death.

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