Paramount has as expected set an awards qualifying run for Martin Scorsese’s passion project and anticipated Oscar season heavy-hitter starring Andrew Garfield.

Silence

Silence will open in limited release on December 23, day-and-date with Japan through Kadokawa and Australia via Transmission. It will expand in the US in January 2017 and roll out across Europe in January and February 2017.

The Oscar-winning director has attempted to make the film for many years and it finally began to move forward when IM Global brought Scorsese to Cannes to launch sales in May 2013.

Mexican producer Gaston Pavlovich’s Fabrica de Cine provided lead financing alongside AI Film and executive producer Dale A. Brown of Sharpsword Films. The producers are Scorsese and Emma Tillinger Koskoff, Randall Emmett, Barbara Defina, Vittorio Cecchi Gori and Irwin Winkler. IM Global founder Stuart Ford is among the executive producers.

The story centres on a pair of 17th century Portuguese missionaries who travel to Japan during the brutal ‘Christian Century’ persecutions in a bid to find and rescue their mentor.

Starring alongside Garfield are Adam Driver, Liam Neeson, Ciaran Hinds, Yosuke Kubozuka, Tadanobu Asano, Issey Ogata and Yoshi Oida.

Scorsese and Jay Cocks adapted the screenplay from the late Japanese Roman Catholic author Shusaku Endo’s revered 1966 novel of the same name.