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Bitters End has set North American distribution for “All the Lovers in the Night,” Yukiko Sode’s Yukino Kishii and Tadanobu Asano starrer that premiered in Un Certain Regard at Cannes earlier this year.
Several Futures
has acquired the film for the U.S. and Ritual Films for Canada. The company has also closed a deal with Movies Matter for Thailand.
The new deals join a slate of previously announced territories, including France, where Art House Films will distribute the film after releasing Sode’s “Aristocrats,” which drew more than 71,000 admissions in the country. Additional territories include Spain (Atalante), Bulgaria (NeterraTV+), Brazil (Belas Artes Grupo), South Korea (Pancinema), Taiwan (Andrews Film), Hong Kong (Edko Films), Singapore (Anticipate Pictures) and Indonesia (PT Falcon).
Based on Mieko Kawakami’s novel, the film follows Fuyuko, a freelance proofreader whose solitary existence shifts after she meets Mitsutsuka, a high school physics teacher, at a local culture center. Kishii plays Fuyuko, with Asano as Mitsutsuka.
Kawakami’s novel became an international literary sensation, reaching English-language readers and more than a dozen other markets worldwide. It holds the distinction of being the first work of Japanese fiction to make the shortlist for the U.S. National Book Critics Circle Award.
Sode both wrote and directed the film, working from Kawakami’s source material. Her previous feature “Aristocrats” bowed at the International Film Festival Rotterdam ahead of its French theatrical run. She also wrote and directed the Disney+ series “Because We Forget Everything” (2025).
“I see this not as a story about the two of them, Fuyuko and Mitsutsuka, but as a portrait of a woman’s everyday life after she falls in love. She isn’t thinking about romance twenty-four hours a day, so by giving more time to moments that don’t involve Mitsutsuka, I felt we could more clearly convey the subtle shifts in her daily life,” Sode had told Variety ahead of the film’s Cannes premiere.
Kishii previously earned international acclaim for her performance in Sho Miyake’s “Small, Slow But Steady,” which bowed at the Berlin Film Festival, won her the best actress award at the Japan Academy Film Prize. Asano’s role as Lord Kashigi Yabushige in FX’s “Shōgun” brought him a Golden Globe for best supporting actor on television, along with a Primetime Emmy nod – the first such nomination for a Japanese actor in that category.
“All the Lovers in the Night” will open in Japan on Nov. 13.
