Neon, the award-winning studio behind some of the most daring and celebrated films of the last nine years, announced today it has acquired North American rights to Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s “All Of A Sudden,” the new film from the director of the Academy Award winning “Drive My Car.” It is the studio’s first major deal out of EFM in Berlin. The film stars Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto and is currently in post-production following its shoot in Paris and Kyoto. Neon will release the film theatrically.
“All Of A Sudden” revolves around the bond between two women, a Japanese theater director and the head of a French care home. Hamaguchi wrote the script in collaboration with Léa Le Dimna, which is loosely inspired by a collection of real-life exchanged letters published in the book “When Life Suddenly Takes a Turn: Twenty Letters Between a Philosopher with Terminal Cancer and Medical Anthropologist” by Makiko Miyano and Maho Isono.
The film is produced by David Gauquié, Julien Deris, Jean-Luc Ormières, Renan Artukmaç for Paris-based Cinefrance Studios; Hiroko Matsuda, Kosuke Oshida, Yuji Sadai for Japan’s Office Shirous & Bitters End; Bettina Brokemper for Germany’s Heimatfilm; and Joseph Rouschop for Belgium’s Tarantula.
The deal was negotiated by Sarah Colvin for Neon and Renan Artukmaç for Cinefrance Studios. Cinefrance launched international sales for the film this week at EFM in Berlin with Bitters End selling Asia. The film will be distributed by Diaphana in France and Bitters End in Japan.
“All Of A Sudden” is Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s follow-up to “Evil Does Not Exist,” which won the Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize and FIPRESCI International Critics Award at the 2023 Venice Film Festival. Prior to that, Hamaguchi burst onto the international scene in 2021 with his Berlinale Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize winner “Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy” and followed that up a few months later by winning Best Screenplay and the FIPRESCI International Critics Award at Cannes for “Drive My Car.” That film went on to 4 Academy Award nominations including Best Picture (the first for a Japanese film), Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay and winning Best International Feature. It also won the Critics Choice, Golden Globe, Independent Spirit Award, César and BAFTA for Best International Feature. Hamaguchi is also the director of the celebrated films including “Asako” I & II, “Happy Hour” and “Passion.”
About Neon
In only nine years, Neon has garnered 57 Academy Award nominations (18 this year), 11 total wins (5 last year), including two Best Picture wins, and this year earned a historic 21 Golden Globe nominations, the most of any motion picture studio this year. The company continues to push boundaries and take creative risks on bold cinema such as Sean Baker’s Anora, which recently took home five Academy Awards including Best Picture, and was released in theaters to the highest per-screen average of 2024; as well as Bong Joon Ho’sParasite, which made history winning four Academy Awards, becoming the first non-English-language film to claim Best Picture, and grossed over $54M at the domestic box office.
Neon has built an impressive streak winning the coveted Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, with six consecutive wins, including this most recent year’s winner “It Was Just an Accident” from Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi, as well as “Anora,” “Parasite,” “Anatomy of a Fall,” “Titane,” and “Triangle of Sadness.” In 2024, Neon was named The Hollywood Reporter’s Independent Studio of the Year and received the Clio Award for Studio of the Year.
As a burgeoning leader in the production space, Neon’s recent and upcoming in-house productions include: David Robert Mitchell’s “They Follow” starring Maika Monroe; the highly anticipated “Boots Riley feature I Love Boosters” starring Keke Palmer, Naomi Ackie, LaKeith Stanfield, Demi Moore, and Eiza González; “The Wrong Girls” starring Kristen Stewart and Alia Shawkat; Tilman Singer’s “Cuckoo” starring Hunter Schafer; and Brandon Cronenberg’s “Infinity Pool.” Neon’s international sales outfit handles the company’s in-house titles as well as third party projects.
Neon has amassed a library of over 120 films, with a noteworthy selection of Academy Award nominated films including: Mohammad Rasoulof’s “The Seed of the Sacred Fig”; Wim Wenders’ “Perfect Days”; “Robot Dreams” from Pablo Bergfeer; documentaries “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed,” “Fire of Love,” “Moonage Daydream,” and “Flee,” which made history becoming the first film to score an impressive trifecta of Oscar nominations; Joachim Trier’s “The Worst Person in The World”; and Craig Gillespie’s “I, Tonya.”