Festival Predictions

2013 Cannes Film Festival Predictions: Takashi Miike’s Straw Shield

Published on April 3, 2013

#78. Takashi Miike’s Straw Shield

Gist: Based on a novel by Kiuchi Kazuhiro, Straw Shield will follow Fujiwara, a ‘child killer,’ who’s been captured and now must be taken across the country to stand trial, escorted by a pair of police officers played by popular television actors Osawa Takao and Matsushima Nanako. Problems arise when we learn that his victim’s grandfather is wealthy and unsatisfied with the prospect of conventional justice, and is offering a twelve million dollar bounty to anyone who can kill the killer en route to his prison cell.

Prediction: Cannes like Miike, and lately had tried to find room for him wherever they can fit him. His underrated 2011 Comp berth, Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai, impressed few and won zip, so we’ll be surprised to see him return there any time soon, especially since most of his work is so precisely attuned to the demands of their Midnight Screening section.

Related Topics:2013 Cannes Film Festival, Straw Shield, Takashi Miike

Blake Williams

Blake Williams is an avant-garde filmmaker born in Houston, currently living and working in Toronto. He recently entered the PhD program at University of Toronto's Cinema Studies Institute, and has screened his video work at TIFF (2011 & '12), Tribeca (2013), Images Festival (2012), Jihlava (2012), and the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley. Blake has contributed to IONCINEMA.com's coverage for film festivals such as Cannes, TIFF, and Hot Docs. Top Films From Contemporary Film Auteurs: Almodóvar (Talk to Her), Coen Bros. (Fargo), Dardennes (Rosetta), Haneke (Code Unknown), Hsiao-Hsien (Flight of the Red Balloon), Kar-wai (Happy Together), Kiarostami (Where is the Friend's Home?), Lynch (INLAND EMPIRE), Tarantino (Reservoir Dogs), Van Sant (Last Days), Von Trier (The Idiots)