EXCLUSIVE: When Masashi Kawamura first launched his now viral stop-motion short Hidari in 2023, the Japanese filmmaker admits he could never have anticipated he’d be working with Keanu Reeves for a full-length feature version of the film. 

“There was a lot of luck getting Keanu,” admits Kawamura, whose background is largely in music videos and commercials. “After we finished proof of concept with the five-minute film, I just started making this dream list of people I wanted to use as the voice cast and he was obviously at the top of my list.” 

The story, Kawamura says, has a John Wick feel to it in that it centers around a lead character who turns grief into vengeance. So, when the filmmaker and his producer Noriko Matsumoto of dwarf studios reached out directly to Reeves and his team, they were delighted that the actor was intrigued by the story and boarded the project to voice the lead character Jingoro.

“I was so happy we did the proof of concept, because that was the reason we made it,” says Kawamura of the YouTube short that has since amassed five million views. “Nobody really knows me as a director, and this is my first-time feature film. It’s an original script and doesn’t have any IP attached to it, so I knew there were going to be a lot of challenges. We couldn’t pitch the concept with the script or concept boards – we really had to have something that gets people excited.” 

The action-packed feature, which is inspired by Edo era craftsman Jingoro Hidari, follows Jingoro who has lost everything – his father figure, fiancée and even his right arm – after he has been betrayed by those desperate to bury the secrets of Edo Castle’s reconstruction. On the brink of despair, the legendary craftsman transforms his grief into an unyielding drive for vengeance. Armed with his extraordinary carpentry skills and a series of lethal mechanical prosthetic arms, Jingoro carves his own path to justice. With his loyal companion, the “Sleeping Cat”, he faces his enemies in a gripping tale of revenge and self-discovery. 

“There’s fantasies, chainsaws, crazy wooden robots appearing and it’s kind of like a fictional period drama,” says Kawamura. “But we wanted to keep the narrative quite simple, because the visual is so complex. So, we are definitely going more down the action path with this.” 

Hidari is produced by Matsumoto, who has played a leading role in positioning dwarf studios as one of the first in Japan to collaborate with global streamers, after its Netflix series Rilakkuma gained widespread attention. Her latest project, short film Bottle George, was shortlisted at the 2025 Oscars. The film is also produced by Whatever and TECARAT and its financing partner is Questry Co.’s Tomonobu Ibe. 

Kawamura’s career spans commercials, music videos and television shows to creating clones for Lady Gaga and designing the largest pavilion at Osaka Expo 2025. His projects have earned global recognition, including a Cristal at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival and an International Emmy Award nomination. 

While this is Kawamura’s first foray into the stop-motion world, he says he was “always looking for an opportunity” to explore the medium. “My expertise is live-action and CG work,” he says. “But when Noriko approached me about developing a project that could resonate with international distributors, platforms and studios, we thought we could figure out a way to create an ambitious stop-motion feature film.”

He continues: “I loved watching stop-motion in my youth, and I felt the magic is the fact that you’re shooting real objects and you’re not replicating them through programming. It’s really these inanimate objects using cinema magic. The texture, the material, that kind of tactile presence is what I really wanted to make as part of the story.” 

Kawamura began thinking of the material first and assessed water, fire, metal, leather and wood as potentials but chose the latter for its “strong roots in Japanese culture and history.” 

“It was a very conscious decision, and I thought if we could do some wooden puppet work, it would be something visually and aesthetically unique and interesting.” 

Building on this, he recalled the story of a legendary sculptor Jingoro Hidari. “Nobody knows if he existed or not,” he says. “There’s this writing left of him and there are sculptures still left in about 500 locations that are said to be the work of the Hidari, but when you look into it, the work spans across 200 years. 

“I felt like there was a lot of intrigue behind this mysterious, somewhat historical character, and it felt perfect because he was a sculptor and his work was said to come alive because it looked so real. That’s the kind of myth around him and I knew that if I could tell the story of a sculptor through a wooden puppet that looks like it’s one of his own creations, then that would be a very interesting and extra layer to the film itself.”  

One of Hidari’s most famous sculptures is the “Sleeping Cat,” which features in the film and is currently situated at the Tōshōgū Shrine in Nikkō, Japan. 

Kawamura and Matsumoto are in active conversations with a number of potential international partners to push Hidari into production and Reeves’ support has been key with Kawamura stressing that the actor has already given lots of ideas to the project. 

“He’s super focused,” he says. “I was just a fanboy but now I’m almost working as a partner with him. I’ve learned so much from him and continue to learn from him as we go.”