Dear Stranger (ディア・ストレンジャー) is a provocative new Japanese suspense drama written and directed by Tetsuya Mariko, marking Toei Company’s first-ever English-language live-action feature and a major international co-production.
With a gripping tale that spans cultures, languages, and emotional depths, this must-watch drama is set to release in cinemas on September 12, 2025.
The trailer for Dear Stranger grips viewers with an atmosphere of suffocating tension. It follows Kenji and Jane, an Asian couple in New York, whose lives unravel after their son’s mysterious kidnapping. Through a barrage of unsettling images—a tense home invasion, gunfire in the dark, ominous music, and city chaos—the trailer blurs the lines between reality and paranoia, immersing us in the couple’s disorienting grief and growing mistrust. A cryptic doll, glimpsed at both the start and end, heightens the film’s sense of instability and foreboding. As secrets surface and Kenji and Jane’s relationship fractures under pressure, the trailer teases a harrowing mystery: What secret are they hiding? And can a family, shattered by tragedy and silence, ever be whole again?
Watch the trailer | Dear Stranger
Synopsis
Kenji (Hidetoshi Nishijima, Drive My Car) and Jane (Gwei Lun-Mei, Black Coal, Thin Ice) are a Japanese man and his Chinese-American wife struggling with work, parenting, and the expectations of immigrant life in New York City. When their young son is kidnapped and murdered, it unearths devastating secrets and silent rifts in their marriage. Can the couple, torn apart by tragedy, find a way to rebuild the “happy family” they once imagined, or will grief and guilt consume them?
Cast, Crew & Release Date | Dear Stranger
Director & Writer: Tetsuya Mariko (Destruction Babies, Miyamoto)
Lead Cast: Kenji Saiga: Hidetoshi Nishijima; Jane Yang: Gwei Lun-Mei; Detective Bixby: Christopher Mann
Additional cast: Everest Talde, Fiona Fu, Mia Reece, James Chu, Aitor Martin, Lanett Tachel
Production: Rollin Studios, Toei Company, Roji Films, international partners
Release Date: September 12, 2025 (Japan); International release details TBA
Shot entirely on location in New York—spanning Brooklyn, Harlem, and Chinatown—the film vividly captures the urban, multicultural reality at the heart of its story. The script unfolds in English, Japanese, Mandarin, Spanish, and even sign language.
