Universal Pictures International and Parco are teaming to release Baltasar Kormakur’s film Touch in Japan next week on January 24, 2025.

The film has particular local resonance, being the story of a decades-spanning love story between an Icelandic man and a Japanese woman who is a survivor of the Hiroshima atomic bomb attack of 1945 and who battles the stigma associated with the survivors, known in Japan as Hibakusha.

The film is Iceland’s submission for the international film Academy Award and is on the 15-film shortlist. Pic features Japanese stars Koki, Masahiro Motoki and Masatoshi Nakamura alongside Icelandic actors Egill Olafsson and Palmi Kormakur.

The drama had its Japanese premiere at the Hiroshima International Film Festival in November last year attended by director Kormákur. It also screened in Oslo during the Nobel prize ceremonies in December where Nihon Hidankyo, the organisation of survivors from the bomb attacks in Hiroshima and Nagasaki,...