Photo/Illutration From right: director Gakuryu Ishii, actors Koichi Sato, Masatoshi Nagase and Tadanobu Asano attend a news conference in Berlin on Feb. 18, a day after the screening of “The Box Man” at the Berlin International Film Festival. (Atsushi Ohara)

BERLIN--A feature film adaptation of Kobo Abe’s novel “The Box Man” premiered at the 74th Berlin International Film Festival, 27 years after the initial plan.

The film was selected for the Berlinale Special program of the prestigious festival that ended on Feb. 25.

“It is full of gags and surreal action scenes,” director Gakuryu Ishii told the audience before the screening. “I hope you laugh as much as you can and enjoy this latest magical mystery tour.”

The story centers around a man holed up in a cardboard box who views the world through a peephole.

Fascinated by the bizarre presence, other men compete with each other to become a “box man” themselves. But they lose their identities and fall into a labyrinth.

The director was originally ready to start shooting in Germany in 1997, but he was forced to stop production the day before filming was scheduled to begin.

The film stars Masatoshi Nagase, who was cast for the lead role in the original project, and co-stars Koichi Sato and Tadanobu Asano.

The film drew laughter and cheers from the audience at the festival as they watched the box-wearing men face off with each other.

Ishii appeared on stage again after the screening amidst the applause from the crowd.

“When I was about to start production of the Japan-Germany joint project 27 years ago, I was forced to stop due to financial trouble on the Japanese side,” he said. “As you can see, it is a challenging project, and I had thought it would be impossible to produce in today’s film industry in Japan. But the times have caught up with ‘The Box Man.’”

The director continued: “Abe, the writer of the original novel, predicted that people would lose their identities in an information society. We are surrounded by a few layers of information and delusions of our own. This is exactly the time for ‘The Box Man.’ I really like the film for how it came along.”

Nagase, Sato and Asano also appeared on the stage.

Nagase said Ishii kept telling him over the years that he hadn’t given up on the project.

“I was there in the lobby of a hotel in Hamburg 27 years ago when the director said, ‘It has to be scrapped,’ so I think it is an indescribably great story to see the film complete and have its world premiere in Germany today.”

Local media praised Nagase’s performance, saying there had been no invisible person, or one without existence, who appears so impressive on screen.

“The Box Man” will be shown in Japan later in the year.

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