PREVIEW: Minamata (15)

WHO’S IN IT?

Johnny Depp (Sleepy Hollow), Hiroyuki Sanada (The Last Samurai), Minami Hinase (Vengeance Can Wait), Bill Nighy (Love Actually), Jun Kunimura (The Wailing), Tadanobu Asano (Thor), Ryo Kase (Letters from Iwo Jima), Katherine Jenkins (film debut), Masayoshi Haneda (47 Ronin), Akiko Iwase (Earthquake Bird)

WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?

Andrew Levitas (Lullaby), director, writer, producer; David Kessler (film debut), writer, producer; Stephen Deuters (film debut) and Jason Forman (film debut), writers; Johnny Depp (Mortdecai), Bill Johnson (The Experiment), Sam Sarkar (film debut), Gabrielle Tana (Philomena) and Kevan Van Thompson (Into the Sun), producers; Ryuichi Sakamoto (The Revenant), composer; Benoît Delhomme (The Theory of Everything), cinematographer; Nathan Nugent (Room), editor

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

In 1971, revered photojournalist W. Eugene Smith (Depp) is secretly commissioned to a new assignment by Life magazine editor Robert Hayes (Nighy), which sees him travelling to the Japanese coastal city of Minamata where decades of industrial negligence by the country’s Chisso Corporation has led to an outbreak of mercury poisoning. As Smith immerses himself into the community, documenting their daily struggles with the disease and their campaigns to receive attention from both Chisso and the government, he manages to capture a tragic side to the disaster that moves the world…

IN ONE SENTENCE, WHY SHOULD YOU BE EXCITED?

Although he’s been somewhat tarnished by recent legal cases, Johnny Depp continues to make good use of his movie star image by presenting the real-life story of the photojournalist who captured a devastating portrait of the toxic Japanese city of the title.

WHEN’S IT OUT?

FRIDAY 6TH AUGUST 2021

WHERE CAN I FIND IT?

IN CINEMAS NATIONWIDE, AND AVAILABLE TO RENT/BUY ON DIGITAL PLATFORMS, INCLUDING AMAZON PRIME VIDEO

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