Kani Releasing Accuires North American Rights to Japanese Queer Classic ‘Bye Love’ (Exclusive)

Kani Releasing Has Picked Up North American Rights to Isao Fujisawa’s 1974 Cult Queer Classic Bye bye loveA Film Once Feared Lost to Time. Kani Releasing Plans to Bring the Film to Us Arthhouse Theaters in Late 2025, Followed by a Select Vod Placement and Home Video Release.

For decades, Bye bye loveFujisawa’s Only Fictioning Feature, Was Considered Lost, As The Only Known Screening Print Had Dteriored to Such An Exture That Is Was No Longer Abler Ablethastand. But The Film’s Original Negative Fortuitously Resurfaced in a Tokyo Film Lab’s Warehouse in 2018, and Japanese Producer and Director Akihiro Suzuki (Look for and angel) HAS BEEN CHAMPIONING The FILM’S REVERATION AND REVIVAL EVER SINCE.

Suzuki’s Own Work, Along with Scores of Other Jishu Eiga (Self-Powced Films), Were Deeply InfluenCed by Bye bye loveas the Film Became One of the most Widely Seen Indie Features of Japan’s 1970s Counterculture. Kani Releasing Has Also Picked Up All North American Rights to Suzuki’s Look for and angel (1999), WHICH HE MADE WITH DIRECT INSPIRATION FROM Bye bye love.

Fujisawa Learned The Craft Hew Channel Into Bye bye love by working as an assistant director to hiroshi teshigahara on Several 1970s Japanese New Wave Classics Like Woman in the Dunes an The Face of Another. Fujisawa Later Went On to Work in Television and to Direct Documentaries, But Bye bye love WAS HIS ONLY FICTIONAL FEATURE. A deeply personal reckoning with sexual Identity, The Film Has Been Descripted by Critics As Bridging the Distance Between Jean Luc Godard’s Pierrot le fouArtthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde and toshio matio Matsumoto’s Funeral Parade of Roses -All with Impecable Style and Strong Anti-Iimperialist and Existentialist Themes.

Bye bye love Follows The Lost and Nihilistic Utamaro, As He CHANCES UPON The NON-BINARY GIKO, A FEMALE-Presentation Shoplifter Who ImMediately Catches his Eye. As one Thing Leads to Another, The Couple Finds Themselves on the Lam for Murder. This Provides for a Delightful Pretext to Explore Rich Notions of Societal Malaise, Free Love and Gender Fluidity in a Rapidly Evolving Japan as the Both Utamaro and GiKo and GiKo Begin to To Begin and GiTh. of surrealistic, Psycheredelic and frank Sexual Encounters.

Following the Rediscovery and Restoration of Bye bye love‘S NEGATIVES, New York’s Metrograph Cinema Mounted An Inspired Run of The Film Alongside Teshigaharaha and Fujisawa’s Beloved Kobo Abe Adaptations, Women of the Dunes an Face of Another.

Inspired by Bye bye loveAkihiro suzuki’s debut Look for and angel (1999) Follows Shinpei, A Country Boy Newly Arrived to Tokyo, Who Processes the Murder of Takachi, A Gay Performer Best Known for His Porn Tapes. Reckoning withis Act Against the Backdrop of a Deeply Nostalgic, Blue-HUED CITY SHOT IN A VARIETY OF FORMATS RANTS Free-Associative and Completely Independent Film Descripted by Suzuki Himself as “Neither Straight, Gay, Queer, Bisexual, Asexual or Pornographic, But Anti-Cheeteros.

“ATTAL, OUT-OF-The-Blue, Diamond-in-The-Excovery Coming to Us From Passionate Archivists of Japanese Cinema Such as Akihihro Suzuki and Collabaostarate Bye bye love Feels Like A Missing Piece in The Continuing Film History of The Japanese Counter-Culture-Its Torch Carred Decodes Later in Films Such As Look for and angel And Countless Other Jishu eiga films unapraid to challenge the status quo with their Images and Spirit, ”Says ariel esteban Cayer, Kani Releasing’s Bring These Films to A Wider Audience. ”