Kumiko - The Treasure Hunter

The enchanting and powerfully affecting new film from David & Nathan Zellner, inspired by true events, KUMIKO, THE TREASURE HUNTER tells the story of a young woman’s extraordinary journey from Japan to Minnesota, in search of a mythic fortune.

The eponymous heroine, indelibly portrayed by Academy Award-nominee Rinko Kikuchi (Babel), lives a shy and solitary life in a cramped Tokyo apartment shared only by her beloved pet rabbit Bunzo. Increasingly isolated, constantly browbeaten by her mother who complains that she isn’t married yet, and stuck in a dead-end job with a demeaning boss, Kumiko devotes all her spare time to compulsive viewings of Joel and Ethan Coen’s classic Fargo. It’s not so much the film that fascinates her, more the suitcase of cash Steve Buscemi’s hapless kidnapper buries beneath the snow in the titular city’s outskirts. 

 

Rewinding and fast-forwarding her weathered VHS tape to the point of its destruction, Kumiko meticulously hand-sews a map that pinpoints where she believes the money remains buried, and commences a life-changing odyssey towards the wintry American Midwest to claim it.

Gloriously realised and utterly one-of-a-kind, KUMIKO, THE TREASURE HUNTER is a tender and beguiling tale of obsession and delusion that lays bare the universal human need for adventure, and soars to a profoundly moving climax that reveals both the danger and magic of the intoxicating effects of cinema.