Keanu Reeves To Lead Voice Cast Of Masashi Kawamura’s Edo Era-Set Animation ‘Hidari’
Keanu Reeves will lead the voice cast in Masashi Kawamura's upcoming animated feature film 'Hidari,' an expansion of Kawamura's viral 2023 stop-motion short. The film draws inspiration from the life of Edo-era craftsman Jingoro Hidari and follows his journey of vengeance after suffering great personal loss. Produced by dwarf studios and backed by Japanese financing firm Questry Co., the project was announced at the Annecy Animation Showcase in Cannes.
- ▪Keanu Reeves is set to voice a lead role in Masashi Kawamura’s animated feature 'Hidari,' inspired by Edo-era craftsman Jingoro Hidari.
- ▪The film expands on Kawamura’s 2023 stop-motion short, which has amassed nearly five million views on YouTube.
- ▪'Hidari' is produced by Noriko Matsumoto’s dwarf studios and financed by Questry Co.’s Tomonobu Ibe, a prominent figure in Japanese entertainment finance.
- ▪Masashi Kawamura is an internationally recognized director with accolades including a Cristal at Annecy and an International Emmy nomination.
- ▪dwarf studios previously gained attention for the Netflix series 'Rilakkuma' and the Oscar-shortlisted short film 'Bottle George.'
5 outlets in our directory ran this story, first to last over 11 hours. Coverage spans 2 points on the political spectrum — 3 lean left, 1 centre.
- ▪ Wake Up Samurai — Keanu Reeves Carves Out Lead Role in Japanese Stop-Motion 'Wood Sculpture' Film Hidari — IGN — Top
- ▪ Keanu Reeves Gets His Samurai On with Stop-Motion ‘Hidari’ Film — Gizmodo
- ▪ Keanu Reeves to Voice Lead in Stop-Motion Samurai Movie ‘Hidari’ — Variety
- ▪ Keanu Reeves to Lead Voice Cast of ‘Hidari,’ Japanese Stop-Motion Samurai Epic From Director Masashi Kawamura — The Hollywood Reporter
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| Original publisher | Deadline |
| Canonical URL | https://deadline.com/2026/05/keanu-reeves-masashi-kawamuras-animation-hidari-1236907812/ |
| Publication time | Sun, 17 May 2026 09:30:00 +0000 |
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Keanu Reeves, Hidari Getty, Dwarf Studios Keanu Reeves has signed up to lead the voice cast in Japanese animation director Masashi Kawamura’s long-awaited feature film extension of his viral stop-motion short Hidari. News of Reeve’s involvement in the project was announced at the Annecy Animation Showcase in Cannes on Sunday morning. The action-packed feature takes inspiration from accounts of the life of legendary Edo era craftsman Jingoro Hidari. “I’m thrilled by the vision behind Hidari. From the proof of concept to the developed script, the team has created something truly extraordinary. It has all the makings of an exceptional film—one I’m excited to see and eager to be part of.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Deadline.