Directed by  Joji Koyama, Tujiko Noriko     Cast  Tujiko Noriko, Jackie    Produced by  Joji Koyama, Tujiko Noriko, Gilles Chanial     Director of Photography  Joji Koyama     Music  Tujiko Noriko     Sound Production  Coda to Coda     Audio Supervisor  Tanya Auclair for Coda to Coda     Re-Recording Mixers  Will Worsley, Sam Britton, Steve Bond     Post-production  Time Based Arts     Colourist  Jack McGinity     Post-producer  Jo Chounta     Camera Assistants  Elisa Franck, Antonin Le Guay     Sound Recordists  Marc Thill, Stan Bertin     Graphic Design and Typeface  Dinamo

Kuro
A film by Joji Koyama and Tujiko Noriko
Germany/UK/Japan, 2017
84 minutes

Romi, a Japanese woman living in Paris, works in a karaoke bar. At home in the suburbs, she tends to her paraplegic lover Milou. To pass the time she recounts to him a story alluding to a period they once spent together in Japan. Soon, the mystery of a man named Mr. Ono begins to unsettle everything. Weaving together personal history, anecdotes and myths, the story takes a dark turn.

“Kuro is a film about our need for narrative to make sense of our lives. We were interested in how stories become a kind of architecture of our understanding of the world, as well as protection from what we fear and do not understand. However much we protect ourselves with stories, the ways in which we construct, use and interpret them are in constant flux. Perhaps our film is also about the ways in which narrative ultimately tries to articulate the unknowable and how in spite of this, the unknowable always returns to haunt us. We wanted to make a film that plays with, and at moments unhinges the mechanisms of storytelling, in order to produce a cinematic experience that allows for space and ambiguity for the audience to explore.”
—Joji Koyama and Tujiko Noriko

About the directors

Joji Koyama is a Berlin-based filmmaker, animator and graphic artist. His short films, animations and music videos (including Four Tet, Mogwai and Coldcut) have screened internationally, winning awards at the London Short Film Festival and British Animation Awards. In 2015 he began Toupée, a small publishing imprint, and published his first book of short visual stories, Plassein. This was followed by Elsewhere, an illustrated colouring book published by Penguin Books. Working in a wide variety of media and contexts, he has collaborated with musicians Matthew Herbert, as well as theatre maker Ant Hampton.

Tujiko Noriko is a Paris-based musician, singer, songwriter and filmmaker. To date she has released over seventeen highly regarded albums for labels including Editions Mego, Tomlab, Fat Cat and Room 40. In 2003 her album Hard Ni Sasete received an Honorary Mention at the Prix Ars Electronica. Tujiko has written music for films, dance, animations and art installations, and has collaborated with renowned musicians Peter Rehberg, Nobukazu Takemura and Lawrence English. In 2005 Tujiko began directing films, which has resulted in the two films Sand and Mini Hawaii and Sun, both of which have screened internationally, including the Foundation Cartier in Paris. Her most recent musical project was the solo album My Ghost Comes Back.

Kuro Original Soundtrack
Music by Tujiko Noriko, with contributions by Joji Koyama, Sam Britton and Will Worsely
PAN 2019, Entopia

Written and produced by Tujiko Noriko. Mixed by Sam Briton and Will Worsley at Coda to Coda, London. Mastered by Rashad Becker at D&M, Berlin. Photography by Joji Koyama. Typeface by Dinamo. Layout by Bill Kouligas and Johannes Schnatmann.

For press and screening enquiries / 上映、プレスに関するお問い合わせはこちらから:
romi-at-kuro-dot-film

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Supported by the European Commission

Website: ourwork.is
© 2017 Kuro