The International Federation of Film Critics FIPRESCI named the best film of 2022.

The Grand Prix this time was given to the tape of the Japanese director Ryusuke Hamaguchi "Sit behind the wheel of my car."

The prize will be presented on September 16 at the grand opening of the 70th San Sebastian International Film Festival.

Also at the event, the tape will be broadcast as part of a special screening.

Any film released after July 1, 2021 could receive the Grand Prix.

Voting took place among 646 critics from around the world.

In the final for the main prize this year, four more films competed - the film "Licorice Pizza" by Paul Thomas Anderson, the drama "Power of the Dog" by Jane Campion, as well as the film "Triangle of Sorrow" directed by Ruben Ostlund and the film "The Worst Man in the World", shot by Joachim Trier.

This is not the first prize of the drama film "Get behind the wheel of my car."

The film premiered at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival where it won three awards, including Best Screenplay.

In addition, the film received three awards for the best foreign language film - the British Academy Film Awards, the Golden Globe and the Oscar in 2022.

In the center of the plot of the film is the theater director Yusuke Kafuku, who receives an invitation to stage the play "Uncle Vanya" based on the play by A.P. Chekhov.

According to the terms of the contract, he cannot drive a car himself, so he is provided with a driver - a girl named Misaki, with whom he goes from Tokyo to Hiroshima.

The action of the tape is focused mainly on the communication of the main characters.

Yusuke and Misuki have various dialogues, with the help of which each of them will be able to rethink something in their lives.

So, the director realizes that his marriage to his wife, who recently passed away, was far from ideal, and the girl driver is trying to deal with her past.

A mysterious bond develops between the characters, opening the way for mutual relief and new beginnings.

  • © Shot from the film "Drive my car"

The main roles in the film were played by Hidetoshi Nishijima ("Crab Catcher", "We'll Say Goodbye Someday") and Toko Miura (TV series "Cool Teacher Onizuka", "Girl in the Sun").

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the role of Misaka could go to Toko Miura on one condition - if she quickly mastered driving a car with a manual transmission.

The actress ended up taking intensive driving courses for several weeks, after which she got behind the wheel of a Saab 900 Turbo and showed off her skills to assistant director Hamaguchi.

The film "Drive My Car" was based on the short story of the same name by the writer Haruki Murakami from the collection "Men without women.

Men without women.

It is known that in the process of developing the idea, Hamaguchi and one of the producers of the tape, Akihisa Yamamoto, came to the conclusion that the story itself was weak for a film adaptation, so they also added elements from two other works of the same collection of stories - Shahrazade and Cinema ".

In addition, the filmmaker re-read A.P. Chekhov's play "Uncle Vanya" and was struck by the relevance of the dialogues.

As a result, Hamaguchi decided to use more detail, Chekhov's lines from the original play, than Murakami had.

The director outlined the full idea of ​​the film with his ideas on dozens of pages and sent it to the writer in the hope that he would approve the project.

In the end, it happened: Murakami's response letter contained a brief agreement without any comments.

When asked by The Hollywood Reporter about whether Murakami himself saw the film, Ryusuke Hamaguchi admitted that he learned about it from an interview.

“Yes, I looked.

I read in one interview that he watched it and, in particular, noticed that the car was of a different color.

It surprised him.

Reading this interview, I was a little worried about his opinion.

But he gave me the biggest compliment I could ever hope for.

He said that when watching the film, he could not remember which elements were his and which were not.

It seems to me that this means that we managed to keep the world of Murakami in its original form, ”said the director.

Ryusuke Hamaguchi, a 43-year-old filmmaker, has been active in film production for the past year and a half.

As a screenwriter, he co-wrote Kiyoshi Kurosawa's historical thriller The Spy's Wife.

The film won the Silver Lion for Best Director at the 2020 Venice Film Festival.

In addition, Hamaguchi directed the feature film Chance and Guess about modern women in Japan, which won the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize at the Berlin Film Festival in 2021.

The FIPRESCI International Federation of Film Critics has been presenting its annual award since 1999.

In 2021, the Grand Prix went to the film "Land of Nomads" directed by Chloe Zhao.