MUMBAI: Matthew McConaughey, who recently won the Golden Globe and the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) award for his performance in Dallas Buyers Club and has been nominated for the coveted Academy Award, has been cast in Gus Van Sant’s upcoming film along with Ken Watanabe (The Last Samurai).

Based on a script by Chris Sparling (Buried), the story of Sea of Trees follows an American man played by McConaughey, who takes a journey into the infamous “Suicide Forest” at the foothills of Mount Fuji with the intention of taking his own life. When he is interrupted by a Japanese man played by Watanabe, who has had second thoughts about his own suicide, and is trying to find his way out of the forest, the two begin a journey of reflection and survival.

Gus Van Sant was nominated for an Academy Award for helming the Matt Damon starrer Good Will Hunting and the Sean Penn starrer Milk, for which Penn won the Best Actor Oscar. In addition to Dallas Buyers Club, McConaughey was last seen in The Wolf of Wall Street and can also be seen in the HBO Original series True Detective, currently airing in India on HBO Defined.