‘A Pale View of Hills’ by Kazuo Ishiguro Adapted by Bunbuku, Number 9

Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro’s debut novel, A Pale View of Hills, is being adapted into a film. This adaptation will be distributed by GAGA Corporation and produced in collaboration with Japan’s Bunbuku and the U.K.’s Number 9 Films.

Scheduled to release in Japan in the summer of 2025, the film is currently in production. Ishiguro himself will serve as an executive producer, while Kei Ishikawa, known for directing Gukoroku: Traces of Sin and A Man, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival, will take the director’s chair. The production team will be led by U-Next’s Hiroyuki Ishiguro.

Ishiguro’s other celebrated works, such as Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go, have previously been adapted into films. Now, A Pale View of Hills, his first novel, will join this esteemed list.

Suzu Hirose, known for her roles in Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Our Little Sister and The Third Murder, will star in the film. This mystery drama explores the hidden memories of a Japanese widow, spanning the eras of post-war Nagasaki in the 1950s and England in the 1980s.

Bunbuku, the Japanese production house behind Kore-eda’s Monster, which won Best Screenplay at Cannes, is onboard for the project. The U.K.’s Number 9 Films, known for producing works like Living and Carol, is also involved. Kazuo Ishiguro himself penned the screenplay for Living, earning an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Ishiguro, originally born in Nagasaki, relocated to England with his family when he was five. His debut novel earned him the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize in 1982.

“I’m a great admirer of Ishikawa-san’s previous movie, A Man, and I’ve been very excited from the first day he expressed his wish to adapt my novel, A Pale View of Hills,” Ishiguro remarked. “He has a masterly command over the language of cinema and draws superbly nuanced performances from his actors. His fine screenplay, which I’ve read with fascination, is mysterious and moving.”

“The story itself concerns the yearnings, hopes and fears of the generation that emerged in a rapidly changing Japan after the horrors of World War Two and the atomic bombings. How appropriate, then, that our movie will be released as we mark the 80th anniversary of the end of those terrible events whose shadows continue to fall over us all today,” he added.

Director Kei Ishikawa shared his thoughts as well: “I still cannot believe that we are making a film based on this special story by our own hands. What gave me the courage to face this great novel was the words of the author Kazuo-san, who said, ‘I always believed that this story should be made into a film by the younger generation in Japan.’”

Hiroyuki Ishiguro of U-Next commented: “Ever since I discovered this novel in London, it has been my dream to adapt it into a feature film as a Japanese-British co-production. During the development of this project, we experienced the pandemic, and now conflicts persist in different places of the world. As we face rapid changes in this world where lifestyles and values are constantly shifting, and the future remains uncertain, I find great significance in bringing this deeply personal story to follow one woman’s memory, set in 1950s Japan and 1980s England — two eras that also underwent paradigm shifts — to a global audience as a narrative with universal themes related to the present.”

Source: Variety, Deadline