Top 100 Most Anticipated Foreign Films of 2017: # 82. Martin Zandvliet’s The Outsider

The Outsider

Director: Martin Zandvliet
Writer: Andrew Baldwin

Danish filmmaker Martin Zandvliet scored his first international success with his third feature, 2015’s tense WWII film Land of Mine, which competed in TIFF’s first Platform Program, and went on to win a slew of festival recognition and box office receipts, earning the distinction of Denmark’s submission for the 2016 foreign language offering (if you haven’t had the opportunity, his 2009 debut Applause starring Paprika Steen as an alcoholic actress performing Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is well worth seeking out). As Land of Mine finally hits US theaters in early 2017, Zandvliet already has another project in post-production with The Outsider, which focuses on a former American G.I. who joins the yakuza in post-WWII Japan. Initially, this project was meant to be Takashi Miike’s English language debut starring Tom Hardy, but scheduling conflicts caused the dissolution of that pairing.

Cast: Jared Leto, Tadanobu Asano, Rory Cochrane, Emile Hirsch

Production Co./Producer(s): Linson Entertainment, Waypoint Entertainment.

U.S. Distributor: Rights available.

Release Date: This past November, Netflix was eyeing distribution rights on The Outsider. While this hasn’t been confirmed, the presence of Leto should make this a high priority festival item. TIFF has a great collaboration with the director (all three of his previous films have played there, either as a World or North American premiere), so we could see this returning there, perhaps with a stop in Venice first.

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