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Austin's Fantastic Fest to Premiere Live Action Smuggler

Katsuhito Ishii's live-action film adaptation of Shohei Manabe's Smuggler manga is set for its American premiere as part of Austin's Fantastic Fest this month. While the screening dates and times have yet to be announced, the festival will run from September 22 to 29.

Ishii has made a name for himself in the last two decades with Skin Man and Peach Hip Girl, The Taste of Tea, and Funky Forest. In addtion, he worked on the animated section of Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill: Vol. 1. Smuggler centers around Ryōsuke Kinuta (Satoshi Tsumabuki), a failed actor with serious debt problems. His loan shark arranges a job for him as part of a corpse disposal team, which transports the bodies of victims of gang hits out of the city and sees to it that they are never seen again. However, with the team accepting work from both sides in an escalating mob war, life for Kinuta and his colleagues gets increasingly dangerous.

Live action versions of both Kengo Hanazawa's Boys on the Run manga and Ken Ishikawa's Gokudō Heiki (Yakuza Weapon) manga will also be screened at this year's festival. Directed by Diasuke Miura, Boys on the Run follows the changing fortunes and love of Toshiyuki Tanishi, a toy-capsule salesman approaching his 30s. Its distributors bill Yakuza Weapon, directed by Yuudai Yamaguchi and Tak Sakaguchi, as "a hard-edged battle royale featuring tough gangsters, deadly women and cybernetic penis implants."

Also appearing at Fantastic Fest are films by Noboru Iguchi and Yoshihiro Nakamura. Iguchi will be live in person at the festival giving the world premiere of his new film Zombie Ass. Fantastic Fest will be showing Iguchi's previous movie Karate-Robo Zaborgar. Nakamura's A Boy and his Samurai (Chonmage Purin) features Ryo Nishikido in what the festival describes as "the ultimate time traveling, father-son, samurai pastry chef, food movie ever made."

Source: Twitch