Bleecker Street announced today that it has acquired the U.S. rights to Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter (2014), directed by David Zellner and written by David and Nathan Zellner, in honor of the film’s 10th anniversary. The renowned film, which was called “one of the best films to ever premiere at Sundance” by David Ehrlich when it premiered, has not been available on streaming for years and will be screening in select theaters beginning March 22 and then released on demand April 2.
This furthers Bleecker Street’s collaboration with the Zellner Brothers, following Sasquatch Sunset starring Riley Keough and Jesse Eisenberg, which premiered to audience and critical acclaim at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival and will be released in theaters on April 12 in limited release and April 19 nationwide.
Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter follows a Tokyo office worker (Rinko Kikuchi) after finds a battered VHS tape of a fictional film and becomes convinced the movie’s lost satchel of money is real. Believing solved the mystery of the buried fortune, abandons everything and embarks on a quest to frozen Minnesota in search of the mythical treasure, discovering the line between reality and fantasy may be even harder to locate.
Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in 2014 and was produced by Nathan Zellner, Chris Ohlson, Andrew Banks, and Jim Burke and executive produced by Alexander Payne. The Associated Press’s Lindsey Bahr described the film as “a haunting, fantasy adventure for the ages…one of this century’s most breathtaking independent films.” The “quietly magnificent” (Jonathan Romney, The Observer) film is Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes and cemented the Zellner brothers’ position as one of the most innovative filmmaking duos of the 21st century.
Most recently, Bleecker Street was in Berlin with the world premiere of Treasure from filmmaker Julia von Heinz, starring Lena Dunham and Stephen Fry, as well as Sasquatch Sunset, which will next play in SXSW in March. Bleecker Street recently released the Stone Age-set thriller Out of Darkness, Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s space station-set thriller I.S.S and Sara Bareilles’ Waitress: The Musical in theaters.
