Japan has picked German director Wim Wenders’ elegant drama Highest Days, which debuted to rave evaluations at Cannes previous this occasion, as its access for the 2024 Oscars in the most productive international attribute division.

The movie follows the day by day routines of a late-middle-aged Eastern guy who works as a cleaner of bogs in Tokyo. Koji Yakusho gained Cannes’ prestigious best possible actor honor for his nuanced portrayal of this straightforward, dignified guy. The movie additionally took house the Ecumenical Jury Prize from Cannes.

The choice marks the primary life Japan has submitted a movie to the Oscars that was once no longer helmed by means of a Eastern filmmaker. However excluding the director, Highest Days is Eastern thru and thru, that includes an all-Eastern solid acting handiest within the Eastern language. Produced by means of Grasp Thoughts Restricted (Japan) and Spoon Inc. (Japan) in collaboration with Wenders Photographs (Germany), the movie is an reliable Japan-Germany co-production.

The Hollywood Reporter‘s supremacy critic David Rooney summed up the movie as “ineffably lovely” in his Cannes evaluate.

“Almost four decades after retracing the footsteps of Ozu in the documentary Tokyo-Ga, Wenders returns to the Japanese capital to make his best narrative feature in years Rooney wrote. Enriched with a vivid sense of place, the film takes its cue from the Japanese word komorebi, which describes the shimmering play of light and shadows through the leaves of a tree, every flickering movement unique.”

The Fit Manufacturing facility is dealing with global gross sales at the movie, however Neon has already obtained U.S. distribution rights, era Mubi has picked it up for the UK, Eire, Turkey and Latin American areas.

Highest Days may be set to open the 2024 Tokyo Global Movie Competition in October, the place Wenders will handover because the president of the development’s major pageant jury.