For Japanese independent cinema, few company names carry as much weight as Bitters End. The firm counts Ryusuke Hamaguchi‘s Oscar-winning Drive My Car and the Locarno Golden Leopard winner Two Seasons, Two Strangers among its production credits, and its banner now sits behind the return of Hiroshi Ishikawa, a director who has been away from features for well over a decade.

Ishikawa’s new film, The Blue We Touch (original title Awo no Jo), is in post-production. As Variety first reported, Bitters End unveiled the project ahead of TIFFCOM, the market attached to the Tokyo International Film Festival. Ishikawa wrote, directed and edited it himself.

According to the premise outlined in Variety, the film is an ensemble drama about two former friends and the feelings between people that are hard to name. Nao plays Mitsu, 29, a contract web designer who wants a permanent job and the chance to make work that reaches an audience. The synopsis has her drawn to Fujino (Ayumu Nakajima), who runs HR at her firm, and slowly sharing grievances she has long kept quiet about.

Erika Karata plays Ayane, who works nights while preparing for a career as a public prosecutor. In the outline, she crosses paths with Tomoki (Yuzu Aoki), an art student who cannot get his figure drawing right, and agrees to sit for him as a model; the sittings open up his work, while she finds her way back to memories she treasures. Arisa Nakano, who made her screen debut in Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days, plays Nozomi, a classmate who watches Tomoki change up close.

The casting also runs through the Hamaguchi films Bitters End has championed: Karata appeared in Asako I & II and Nakajima in Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy. Nao has The Last 10 Years and Sensei’s Pious Lie behind her; Aoki, Minamata, Blue Lock and 5 Centimeters per Second.

Ishikawa came to features from advertising, where he won awards as a commercials director. His debut, Tokyo.sora, arrived in 2002; Su-ki-da. followed in 2006 and earned him best director at the New Montreal FilmFest; Petal Dance came in 2013. His films are known for their careful handling of colour and their feel for the mood of ordinary days.

Bitters End will release The Blue We Touch in Japan in 2027. The company, active for more than three decades, has released films in Japan by Hamaguchi, Bong Joon-ho, the Dardenne brothers, Jia Zhangke, Roy Andersson and Gianfranco Rosi. This year it had All of a Sudden, a Cannes prizewinner and Japan’s Oscar submission for international feature, in competition, and All the Lovers in the Night in Un Certain Regard.

It is also building an international sales arm, and one of its titles, In My Father’s Room, left San Sebastián with the Fipresci Prize and the Ateneo Guipuzcoano Award. After a 13-year gap, Ishikawa returns through a Japanese label that now sells films abroad as well as at home.