The Sun

The Sun (2016)

太陽

The story is set in the early 21st century with the population decimated by bio terror. Two kinds of humans now exist. One is the Nokusu who were infected with a virus but survived and consequently they carry an antibody. Most are young, healthy and have high intelligence, but they have a high sensitivity to ultraviolet rays and are active mostly during the night. The other group are the Kyurio. They survived by never having the virus. The Nokusu discriminates against the Kyurio. Tetsuhiko Okudera is a Kyurio. He was born in a poor village. He isn't happy with being a Kyurio and wishes he could be a Nokusu. Yui Ikuta is Tetsuhiko’s childhood friend. She tries to revive the poor village.

Date of release
2016-04-23
TMDB
8.0 / 10 (1)
Runtime
2h 9m
Genres
Science Fiction
Director
Yu Irie

Casting

Interesting facts

The Sun is a 2016 Japanese science fiction drama film directed by Yu Irie, starring Ryunosuke Kamiki and Mugi Kadowaki. An adaptation of the Tomohiro Maekawa play The Sun, it is set in a near future where a deadly virus pandemic leads to the birth of the Nox, a new species of human immune to the virus who subjugate the Kyurios, humans who did not evolve into Nox. It follows an impoverished young Kyurio who wishes he were a Nox instead.

Production

Following the 2012 release of Roadside Fugitive, the last film in Yu Irie's 8000 Miles trilogy, a film producer who had worked with Irie on the trilogy asked him if he would be willing to direct a live-action film adaptation of Tomohiro Maekawa's science fiction play The Sun. After watching the play, Irie agreed, feeling that Maekawa's take on science fiction was unique for a Japanese play.

Irie spent two years co-writing the screenplay with Maekawa, during which he worked on two other films, the live-action film adaptations of Hibi Rock and Joker Game. He claimed that, through his work on those films, he learnt the "limits" of what he could achieve in filmmaking.

Ryunosuke Kamiki was cast as the protagonist, as Irie "couldn't" envision anyone else in the role and Mugi Kadowaki was similarly "easily cast" as the female lead. However, he experienced much difficulty in finding an actor suitable for the role of Morishige. He eventually decided on casting Yuki Furukawa, whom he'd first met in a workshop several years ago, in the role, due to his "elegance" and his height.

The film was shot on location in the winter of 2014 in the Okuchichibu Mountains in Saitama Prefecture and Yamanashi Prefecture. When selecting the shooting locations, Irie made sure to choose areas which he felt adhered to Maekawa's vision. As much of the film was shot on mountains at night, the crew endured "harsh" filming conditions.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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