Sister Brother Manhole Cover to world premiere in Tokyo competition
Milcho Manchevski's dark comedy Sister Brother Manhole Cover will have its world premiere in main competition at the Tokyo International Film Festival.
Variety revealed the news and debuted the trailer on 1 October, ahead of this year's festival Variety. Competition here means the festival's top awards section, where a jury picks the winners.
Manchevski wrote and directed the film. He is best known as a Venice Golden Lion winner, the top prize at the Venice Film Festival.
The story centres on Malina and Viktor, a sister and brother living hand to mouth at the edges of Macedonian society. To survive, the pair steal bronze statues of national heroes and melt them down for scrap, according to earlier trade reporting Screen Daily.
Sara Klimoska and Filip Trajkovikj lead the cast, with Sonja Mihajlova also appearing. Jane Kortoshev is the producer. Sales materials describe Malina and Viktor as orphaned siblings, and pitch the film as a stark yet tender story about survival and moral ambiguity Coccinelle Film.
On the business side, Coccinelle Film Sales is handling the title. That means selling cinema rights territory by territory to distributors around the world. The company will begin that sales push during Busan's Asian Contents and Film Market, the organised marketplace linked to the Busan festival where buyers shop for new films.
Tokyo is familiar ground for the director. His previous feature Kaymak also world premiered in competition at the Tokyo festival.
What makes this stand out for festival watchers is the return path. A filmmaker with a Venice top prize is bringing a small-scale, street-level comedy about scrap metal and survival into a major Asian competition, with international sales starting next door in Busan.
