‘Plan 75’ Producer Launches Kinofaction To Focus On Minority Japanese Co-Productions

Liz Shackleton
·2 min read

EXCLUSIVE: Loaded Films founder Eiko Mizuno-Gray and Kinoshita-Kansei Group CEO Masahide Kinoshita have teamed up to launch Tokyo-based production company, Kinofaction, which aims to focus on minority Japanese co-productions.

The new outfit will take a minority stake in feature film projects that have significant Japanese elements and/or talent involved. It is actively seeking projects initiated outside of Japan with strong festival and commercial potential.

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Loaded Films, the production company founded by Mizuno-Gray and Jason Gray, will continue to separately produce a slate of projects developed in-house, including Renoir, the next project from Plan 75 director Chie Hayakawa, which Goodfellas has boarded for sales.

Kinofaction already has several projects on its slate, including Poland-set The Excursion, from writer-director Kei Ishikawa, whose credits include Venice titles Traces Of Sin (2016) and A Man (2020). His new project is a co-production with Poland’s Lava Films, which is here in Cannes with competition title The Girl With The Needle.

Also on the slate is an untitled Japan-Philippines coproduction by UTA-represented writer-director Atsuko Hirayanagi, whose credits include Cannes 2017 title Oh Lucy! She was also a show runner and director on the Amazon Prime Video 2022 series Modern Love Tokyo. Her new project will be co-produced by the Philippines’ Fusee, which was also a partner on Plan 75.

Kinofaction is also developing an Osamu Dazai-influenced short film from Vietnamese writer-director Phạm Hoàng Minh Thy, whose 2020 short Live In Cloud-Cuckoo Land played in Venice.

Through Loaded Films, Mizuno has specialised in international co-productions including Plan 75 and Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s To The Ends Of The Earth, which premiered at Locarno film festival in 2019. Plan 75 won the Cannes Camera d’Or Special Mention and was Japan’s Oscar entry for 2023. Loaded Films co-founder Jason Gray will serve as a creative executive at Kinofaction to assess projects.

Kinoshita, whose group companies are involved in industrial recycling, has previously backed Loaded Films productions including To The Ends Of The Earth and Plan 75. Kinofaction marks his first direct foray into film production.

Kinofaction’s founders explained that, aside from the original Russian and German use of the word “kino” in reference to cinema, it also represents the first and last characters of Kinoshita’s and Mizuno’s surnames, respectively. The suffix “-faction” refers to the act of creating something, or more broadly any process involving the specified thing.

Minority co-productions are a function that is currently missing in Japan, where producers don’t have a long history of co-production, or when they do co-produce, tend to be the majority partner.

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