Bayview Entertainment Looks To Oct. 27 For The Golden Reel Collection Release Of Director Maggie Greenwald's Sophie And The Rising Sun

Bayview Entertainment announced this past week that Oct. 27 will be street date for the “Golden Reel Collection” DVD release of director Maggie Greenwald’s 2016 film adaptation of Augusta Trobaugh’s 2001 novel, Sophie and the Rising Sun.

 

The film opened at the Sundance Film Festival on a cold day in January in 2016 and then proceeded to work the festival circuit for a solid year, with stops at the Munich International Film Festival and Stockholm International Film Festival, among others, before getting a very limited arthouse theatrical run in January of 2017 … playing here and there for two full months before dropping out of sight.  This all changes on Oct. 27!!

 

It is the fall of 1941, and we know that the world is about to change, but for this quiet moment we find ourselves in Salty Creek, a small town in South Carolina where a mysterious Japanese man by the name of Grover Ohta (Takashi Yamaguchi — Letters from Iwo Jima, The Last Samurai) is dumped at the bus station, badly beaten.   He is a mystery.   Although an American, he is viewed with suspicion … perhaps Chinese, but certainly a foreigner.

 

Anne Morrison, or just plain, Miss Anne (Margo Martindale — six time Emmy nominee, with wins for Justified and two for The Americans) takes Ohta in and during his recovery we learn that he had journeyed to New York to purchase trees, but was attacked and beaten and “put on a bus out of town.”   She makes good use of his horticulture skills and befriends him, despite the animosity of the “town folk.”

 

 Her neighbor, Sophie (Julianne Nicholson — August: Osage County, Tully, I, Tonya, etc.), is a widow, her husband died on the battlefield of Europe in World War I.   She also befriends Ohta, and finds that they share a common interest in painting.   The two bond and an odd romance begins to bloom, but that day, that December day, finally arrives and everything changes in Salty Creek.

 

Bayview Entertainment release of Sophie and the Rising Sun on Oct. 29 is a powerful, well-told, story of prejudice, racism and the power of friendship and love to overcome even the most horrific of events.   This is a “Golden Reel Collection” treasure that is certainly welcome as it becomes available on DVD on Oct. 27.