The last time the journeyman Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa was at the Venice Film Festival, he took home the event’s prestigious best director award for his period drama Wife of a Spy. He is back in the Italian festival’s main competition this week with Cloud, the first action film of his expansive and acclaimed filmography. The film received a boost on Friday morning ahead of its world premiere on the Lido, as news arrived in Venice that Japan had selected Cloud as its official entry to the Oscars’ best international film race. 

The film tells the story of Ryōsuke Yoshii (Masaki Suda in a star-making performance), a worker at a small factory who makes money on the side as an online reseller of random goods — medical devices, handbags, collectible figurines — anything he can flip for a quick profit. Gradually, Yoshii begins shunning those around him — an old friend who taught him the reselling game, his thoughtful boss at the factory, some of the people he does business with online and in person — focussing exclusively on growing his bank balance. But when ominous and unsettling incidents start to transpire around Yoshii with increasing frequency, he flees the city with his girlfriend (Amane Okayama) to a large lakeside house, hiring a seemingly simple-minded local (Daiken Okudaira) to serve as his sales assistant. There, a growing spiral of animosity eventually finds him. 

Kurosawa, whose previous festival honors include best director wins at Cannes and Rome, connected with The Hollywood Reporter via Zoom prior to his arrival in Venice to discuss the making of his 29th feature film.

What was it about this film’s premise and the themes it would allow you to explore that inspired you?

The inspiration for this project didn’t originate from a thematic angle but from my longstanding desire to create an action film. Action is a genre deeply embedded in the history of cinema, but crafting one set in contemporary Japan presents unique challenges, both logistically and financially. But the ambition to tackle an action film persisted in me.

A significant challenge I set for myself was to deviate from the typical protagonists in Japanese action films — often Yakuza, cops, or defense forces — and instead focus on ordinary people. These are individuals with no connection to violence in their daily lives, yet they find themselves thrust into a life-or-death situation where survival demands extreme measures. This required crafting a story that believably places ordinary people into extraordinary circumstances — kill or be killed. Getting them there was the biggest storytelling challenge. 

What appealed to you about making the protagonist an online reseller? What did this occupation come to represent for you?

It was a personal connection — I know someone who does this kind of work, and I found it fascinating. This person operates in a gray area, where what they do is technically legal but often skirts close to the ethical edge. They are incredibly diligent, constantly checking their computer, sourcing items, listing them, and selling them, all while living in the demanding urban environment of Tokyo. This occupation, to me, symbolizes contemporary capitalism—where if you don’t have standout talents or wealth, reselling is one way to navigate the system. It’s interesting because, when you think about it, this small-scale operation mirrors what large corporations do on a grander scale: buying low, selling high, but with less awareness of any ethical lines being crossed. The occupation felt like a powerful metaphor for the times we live in.

Yeah, I read it as a very pure and corrosive form of laissez-faire capitalism, where the character gradually has less and less concern for the impact his activities have on the people he’s transacting with — and eventually even for his dearest personal relationships. The quest for profit becomes increasingly all-consuming. I really loved how initially his activities don’t necessarily seem so unreasonable, and you use the tropes of the horror movie to create a sense of ambient evil that’s coming to get him for reasons we don’t understand. But as the protagonist is forced to explore why this is happening to him, the audience is nudged to interrogate his behavior and culpability on a deeper level, until the critique that’s embedded in the film gradually becomes ever more visible — even as it tips into the tropes of an outright action flick. 

I really like that take. That kind of reading makes me feel validated in making this film. 

I’m curious to hear your thoughts about the assistant character. I found him kind of inscrutable. What were your intentions there?

When it came to creating the assistant character, he wasn’t drawn from a belief that someone exactly like him exists out in the world, but more from a need within the genre. I wanted a character who appears ordinary on the surface but carries an unsettling, almost hidden capability for violence. Daiken Okudaira, who plays him, is a remarkable young Japanese actor who, though not yet widely known, has a unique appeal that made the character enigmatic and inscrutable. Initially, I was unsure if the character would work, but Okudaira brought his own mysterious energy to the role, which really elevated it.

I usually prefer to leave interpretations open to the audience, but since you asked, in my mind, the assistant represents the devil. He’s someone who has made a subtle, almost invisible contract with the protagonist — offering both happiness and despair in equal measure. That’s the simplest way I see his role in the story.

Running with the anti-capitalist critique above, I grew to see him as a logical endpoint: That the pursuit of profit at all costs makes someone into a blank, unfeeling gangster. 

Oh, I absolutely agree. It’s all there in the final scene in the car between the two of them. How you interpret the film depends on how you read this interaction. You might see him as a monster of capitalism, or more of an abstract devil. Of course, how the film is seen is now in the hands of the viewers. 

Considering these themes and how you handled them, I found myself wondering whether the film is meant as a response to social changes unfolding in Japan — the emergence of a more American-style business culture and a widening income gap that’s eroding some of the country’s long-heralded middle-class social cohesion. Or did you intend your critique to be more universal than that? 

Well, the story is set in contemporary Japan, focusing on the lives of ordinary people, so it naturally reflects the realities of modern Japanese society. I’m not entirely familiar with the nuances of American society, but it’s clear that many countries are grappling with widening divides between the rich and the poor. Japan isn’t quite at that point yet. Historically, Japan experienced a post-war economic boom that fostered a strong middle-class identity, and that sense of shared identity still lingers and is cherished by us.

But as we move forward, there’s a growing sense of uncertainty. Even among those who still identify with the middle class, there’s an undercurrent of anxiety — people feel cornered as if the stability they once took for granted is slipping away. This sense of individual desperation, this fear that “I need to do something or I might lose everything,” is becoming more palpable. It’s this feeling that I wanted to explore in the film — capturing that unease that’s slowly permeating through society.

You said your main priority with this project was simply to fulfill a long-held desire to do an action film. Now that you’ve done that, are there any other latent filmmaking desires you still harbor? You’ve already worked in so many styles and registers across your long career. How do you view your career ambitions at this stage? 

When it comes to my career, I’ve never really mapped out a specific trajectory or had a fixed idea of what I want it to be. Of course, journalists and others around me might help shape that narrative, but for me, it’s the depth and richness of cinematic expression that naturally drives me. No matter how many films I make, I never feel that any of them are truly perfect or complete. In fact, the more films I create, the more elusive the concept of cinema itself becomes as if it’s always one step ahead of me. This simple, almost primitive desire to understand what cinema truly is keeps me going, and I imagine it will continue to do so until I die.