Keanu Reeves has signed on to lead the voice cast of Hidari, the feature-film extension of Masashi Kawamura’s stop-motion short about legendary Edo-era craftsman Jingoro Hidari. News of Reeves’ involvement was announced Sunday morning at the Annecy Animation Showcase in Cannes.
The project builds on a short that has drawn close to five million views on YouTube since it was published in 2023, giving Kawamura’s world a level of visibility most animated shorts never reach. Reeves is the latest addition to a film that aims to push that idea further, with the official synopsis casting Jingoro as a man who loses his father figure, his fiancée and even his right arm after being betrayed by people desperate to bury the secrets of Edo Castle’s reconstruction.
From there, the story turns into revenge. According to the synopsis, Jingoro channels his grief into vengeance, using his carpentry skills and lethal mechanical prosthetic arms to hunt down those responsible, with help from his loyal companion, the Sleeping Cat. The feature is being produced by Noriko Matsumoto under the banner of dwarf studios, with Whatever and Tecarat production, and financing support from Questry Co.’s Tomonobu Ibe.
Matsumoto said dwarf studios is among the first studios in Japan to work with global streamers, pointing to the reach of earlier projects such as the Rilakkuma series, which gained widespread attention on Netflix, and Bottle George, which was shortlisted at the 2025 Oscars. That history helps explain why Hidari is being treated as more than a niche animation experiment. It is being positioned as a feature with international ambition, built on a concept that already proved it could travel online.
Kawamura said he is “super excited” to be collaborating with Reeves, adding that when someone with his experience and creative vision watches the proof of concept and wants to get involved, it is an incredible feeling. He said Reeves is not only lending his voice to Hidari but helping shape and expand its world, a sign that the actor’s role is meant to be more than a name on the poster.
Reeves, for his part, said he was thrilled by the vision behind Hidari, and that from the proof of concept to the developed script, the team had created something extraordinary. He called it a film with the makings of something special for audiences worldwide. The immediate next step is clear: the production now has a marquee voice attached and a story with built-in momentum, leaving the larger question of how far Kawamura can scale his short’s feverish imagination into a feature film.
