Ryu is a solitary girl whose fragile appearance is in stark contrast with the double life she leads, working nights at a Tokyo fishmarket and sporadically taking on jobs as a hit-woman.
Mr Nagara is a powerful impresario mourning the loss of his daughter Midori, who has committed suicide. He blames David, a Spaniard who runs a wine business in Tokyo.
Mr Nagara's employee, Ishida, was silently in love with Midori and hires Ryu to murder David.
A sound engineer, obsessed with the sounds of the Japanese city and fascinated with Ryu, witnesses this love story which searches the shadows of the human soul, reaching deep into places where only silence has the power of eloquence.
24-5-09: “Prix Vulcain Technical Award” - Cannes Film Festival 2009.
15-9-09: Map of the sounds of Tokyo is one of the three finalists for the Spanish Film Academy's pick to be the country's Oscar candidate in Hollywood for the category of Best Foreign Language Film. The film is also candidate for the Ariel prizes awarded by the Mexican Film Academy
7-10-09: ¡More than 300.000 people have seen Map of the sounds of Tokyo!
Spanish film director Isabel Coixet began making films with the 8mm camera she was given for her first communion. After graduating from the University of Barcelona in 18th and 19th century History, she worked in advertising where her successful commercial spots won many awards and led to founding her own production company, Miss Wasabi Films.
In 1988, Coixet made her full-length film debut as scriptwriter and director of Demasiado Viejo para Morir Joven [Too Old to Die Young], nominated for the Goya award for Best New Director. Coixet shot her first English-language feature film in 1996: Cosas que Nunca te Dije [Things I Never Told You]. This emotional drama, with a cast of American actors starring Lili Taylor and Andrew McCarthy, won Coixet her second Goya nomination for Best Original Script. She then entered a partnership with a French producer and, in 1988, returned to filming with a Spanish script with the historical adventure A los que Aman [To Those who Love].
International acclaim came in 2003 with the intimate drama Mi Vida sin Mí [My Life without Me], a film based on the short story by Nancy Kincaid. Sarah Polley plays Ann, a young mother who decides not to tell her family that she is suffering from terminal cancer. This Spanish-Canadian production, that received support from filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar´s production company El Deseo, was a great success at the Berlin International Film Festival. And this film received the Best Adapted Script Goya Award.
Coixet continued to work with Polley in a new film, La Vida Secreta de las Palabras [The Secret Life of Words] premiered in 2005 with Tim Robbins and Javier Cámara in the leading roles. This film received four Goya awards: Best Film, Best Director, Best Production and Best Script.
In 2005, Coixet joined 18 other internationally renowned filmmakers, including Gus Van Sant, Walter Salles and Joel and Ethan Coen, for an innovative collective project called Paris, Je T’aime, starring Miranda Richardson and Sergio Castellitto, in which each director explores a different district of Paris. Coixet has also made notable documentaries on important subjects, such as Invisibles, on Doctors without Borders, a Panorama selection at the 2007 Berlin Film Festival, or Viaje al Corazón de la Tortura [Journey to the Heart of Torture], filmed in Sarajevo during the Balkan war, which won a prize at the October 2003 edition of the Human Rights Film Festival.
Her latest film, Elegy, shot in Vancouver and produced by Lakeshore Entertainment, is based on the novel by Philip Roth THE DYING ANIMAL, and the screenplay is by Nicholas Meyer. Starring Penelope Cruz, Sir Ben Kingsley and Dennis Hopper, Elegy was presented at the 58th Berlin International Film Festival.