Overview
- NEON released the first U.S. trailer on Sept. 10 and confirmed the film’s U.S. premiere at the 64th New York Film Festival with Q&As featuring director Ryusuke Hamaguchi and lead Virginie Efira on Oct. 1–2.
- All of a Sudden is a 196-minute, bilingual drama directed by Hamaguchi that stars Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto and follows a Paris care-home director whose friendship with a terminally ill Japanese theater director reframes ideas about dignity and mortality.
- The film premiered in competition at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival, where Efira and Okamoto jointly won the festival’s Best Actress award, and it has been formally selected as Japan’s submission for the 2027 Best International Feature Oscar race.
- NEON will distribute the film in the United States and is shaping a targeted awards push that uses festival appearances, the new trailer, and a fall theatrical rollout to raise the film’s profile with critics and Academy voters.
- The project’s long runtime, Franco-Japanese production and bilingual script align it with festival and awards strategies used by Hamaguchi and distributor NEON, and the film’s focus on elder care gives the story a direct human stakes that the campaigns are underscoring.