Australian production company Titantale Film is in the middle of shooting Tanabata: The Evening of the Seventh, a supernatural romance drama starring Japanese actor Yamada Takayuki. The film is being fully financed from Australia, with production service partners based in Japan, and is designed as an Australia-Japan collaboration with international appeal.
The story spans three different time periods: Edo-period Japan, 1865 New South Wales, and Australia in 2027. Across these eras, the film follows three incarnations of the same souls as they move through a karmic cycle shaped by love, memory, and possession. Writer-director Gillian Roberts is serving as executive producer, alongside producer Sabin Gnawali.
Yamada Takayuki, widely known internationally for his role in Netflix’s The Naked Director, leads the cast as Takayuki. He is joined by Australian actors Amelia Zadro and Caspar Hardakar, who play Kotori and Charmerae respectively. The film combines romance, supernatural elements, and science fiction, with a strong focus on landscape, ancestry, and unseen forces that influence the characters’ fate.
Production on the project began with a first block that wrapped in December 2025. A second block in Japan started on May 20, 2026, and a third block is planned for October 2026 in Australia. The staggered production schedule reflects the film’s multi-country structure and its ambition to connect Japanese and Australian settings in a visually distinctive way.
Roberts said the inspiration for the film came from the idea that a person’s inner world also exists in an outer world that moves across time, space, and dimensions. She described Tanabata, the Japanese festival celebrated on July 7, as the emotional and spiritual centre of the story. According to Roberts, the film is intended to be a poetic romantic drama with supernatural and sci-fi qualities, where each lifetime leaves an imprint on the next.
The contemporary storyline centres on Yamada’s character, a powerful Japanese technology magnate who finds the modern version of a woman he has loved and tried to possess across multiple lifetimes. On the night of Tanabata, his obsession triggers a portal that pulls both characters back into the cycle they were meant to escape. The narrative links past and present as the characters confront recurring themes of longing, destiny, and spiritual connection.
Gnawali said Tanabata: The Evening of the Seventh offers a rare opportunity to make an Australia-Japan feature with scale, cultural specificity, and global ambition. He praised Yamada’s involvement as a major asset for the film, saying his presence creates a bridge between Japanese audiences and the wider international market. Gnawali also expressed hope that the project will encourage further creative and commercial collaboration between Australia and Japan.
The film positions itself as an emotionally driven, cross-cultural production blending historical drama, supernatural romance, and speculative elements across three countries and centuries.
