January 9, 2025
Hi Gloss Entertainment are delighted to announce for first two theatrical releases of 2025, with Kazuhiro Soda's observational documentary, THE CATS OF THE GOKOGU SHRINE and Laura Piani's romantic comedy JANE AUSTEN WRECKED MY LIFE.
Opening in late March in cinemas around Australia, famed Japanese observational documentarian Kazuhiro Soda's new film, THE CATS OF THE GOKOGU SHRINE is about a Shinto Shrine in a seaside village in Japan's Okayama region that is fully inhabited by cats. Director Soda's 10th Observational documentary and made according to his own '10 Commandments' for documentaries, that include doing no prior research and having no pre-set themes or goals; using long takes with no scripts, narration or super-imposed titles; and shooting himself, for as long as possible. The result is a charming portrait of a community united, and divided, by its spiritual centre and the endearing critters who live there.
Premiering at the 2024 Berlinale where it screened in the Panorama sidebar, The Cats of the Gokogu Shrine had sold-out runs at both Sydney Film Festival and the Melbourne International Film Festival in 2024.
Opening in mid-2025 is Italian filmmaker Laura Piani's debut feature film JANE AUSTEN WRECKED MY LIFE. Written and directed by Laura Piani stars Camille Rutherford (Anatomy of a Fall) and Charlie Anson (Downton Abbey), the film follows Agathe (Rutherford), a young writer unlucky both in love and in her own career, who gets the oppurtinty of a lifetime when she is randomly invited to the Jane Austen Writer's Residency in England. At the retreat, Agathe must overcome a case of writer's block, a persistent former boyfriend and a handsome distant relative of Austen (Anson) in order to fulfil her dreams of becoming a novelist.
