text: Nearly 15 years ago an amazing story emerged of how a young Japanese woman had travelled half-way across the world to try and find a suitcase stuffed with $1m dollars that had been buried in the snow. It was claimed that Takako Konishi had believed the film Fargo was real - after all the hit movie begins with the words 'This is a true story - when she was found dead in a mini-skirt and high-heeled boots in the frozen wastes of Minnesota just days after arriving. This was all confirmed by a police officer from the small town of Detroit Lakes, who said he had spoken to the 28-year-old shortly after she turned up. He said she kept repeating the words 'Fargo, Fargo'. Scroll down for video . Rinko Kikuchi as Takako Konishi in the new film Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter, which tells the story of how the young Japanese woman went searching for a suitcase of cash which had been buried in the film Fargo . According to the film, Takako froze to death searching for the $1 million stash buried in the snow by Steve Buscemi's hapless criminal (pictured) in the Coen Brothers' fictional 1996 film . Fargo was shot in the frozen wastes around the North Dakota town not far from where Takako died . But it turns out that it was all a simple misunderstanding between a small town cop and the woman from Tokyo who could not speak English. Now Takako's incredible story has been made into a film of its own - Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter - newly released by American filmmakers, and brothers, David and Nathan Zellner - that dramatizes the myth of her journey and sad end. What is certain is that Takako's body was found by a hunter in some woodland near Detroit Lakes, a town in Minnesota some 50 miles east of the real town of Fargo, in the neighbouring state of North Dakota, in November 2001. But she didn't die in search of the cash buried in front of a roadside fence under the snow by Steve Buscemi's character in the 1996 Coen brothers film. Paul Berczeller, a New Yorker based in London who in 2003 released his own documentary about Takako, This is a True Story, travelled to the area in the midwest region of the US to find out what really happened. The short film comprises a series of stills in which actress Mimi Ohmori plays Takako and the actual cops involved, Jesse Heliman and Steve Kilde, play themselves. Berczeller told MailOnline: 'The Coen brothers started it really by putting the line "This is a true story" at the start of Fargo. Peter Berczeller used an actress to play Takako in his 2003 film This is a True Story, which told the real tale . Mimi Ohmori in Berczeller's film (left) and Rinko Kikuchi in the Zellner brothers' new release (right) In the new film Takako sets out with a crudely drawn treasure map across the frozen tundra of Minnesota in search of her mythical fortune . A still from This is a True Story in which Takako's body is depicted exactly as it was found, right down to the black thigh boots, miniskirt and coat which she was wearing despite the freezing temperatures . 'It was a half joke, half trick. They were making a joke about how people love to believe a story is real. 'When the story of Takako came out the mix between fiction and reality started by the Coen Brothers, that fuelled the whole story in a way.' On his mission to research his film, Berczeller stayed in the very same motel in Bismarck, the state capitol of North Dakota, where Takako checked in during her stay. He said: 'I had the very same room that she stayed in before she died but I had to call the clerk and say "this is too strange" and get another room. 'There was a British night clerk, which is strange enough in itself out there, and there certainly weren't too many Japanese people passing through so he remembered her. 'I was the one who actually told him she had died. I think he quite liked her because he remembered her really well. She was such a mysterious figure.' Berczeller's breakthrough came when he met Officer Heliman of the Detroit Lakes Police Department, who'd spoken with Konishi for four hours before her death. He said: 'The news stories at the time said this Japanese woman had been found dead in a field near Fargo and quoted the local police as saying that basically she had this map and went to a police station with it. 'It had a road and a tree on it and she kept pointing at it and saying "Fargo, Fargo". Officer Heliman interpreted it as she was trying to find this money. The fantastical story of how Takako travelled all the way from Tokyo in search of the lost money began to spread not long after her death. This is a still from Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter . Berczeller (right) told MailOnline: 'The Coen brothers started it really by putting the line "This is a true story" (left) at the start of Fargo' A scene from This is a True story. Officer Jessie Heliman actually spoke with the real Takako before she died . The Zellner Brothers' new film has been a critical success but is no more a true story than Fargo itself . 'Takako didn't speak any English and the police didn't speak any Japanese so basically they made it up - they didn't lie about it, it was like a game of telephone [Chinese whispers].' 'It was really interesting to find out that "wait a second, the story that everyone believed is completely wrong".' So the story of Takako, which sprung from the outlandish tale of the film Fargo, was based on a simple misunderstanding. And yet this hasn't stopped Kumiko, released in February in the UK and starring Rinko Kikuchi as a version of Takako, become a critical hit. The truth about how a young Japanese woman came to freeze to death thousands of miles from home in temperatures of -3C, while wearing the absurd outfit of a miniskirt, thigh boots and black coat, is actually even more sad than the mythical version. Takako had apparently been chasing an American banker she'd met in Tokyo who'd moved to Singapore and was originally from the town of Fargo. The story of Takako, which sprung from the outlandish tale of Fargo, was based on a misunderstanding . In Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter, the 28-year-old meets up with local cops just as she did in real life . Detroit Lakes in Minnesota. Takako's body was found by a hunter in woodland not far from the small town . The relationship ended but he was the last person she spoke to the night before she died, spending $88 on a 40-minute call to Singapore which Berczeller managed to trace. A suicide letter to her parents said she had gone to the hometown of her ex lover to die and toxicology reports found she had drunk two bottles of champagne and simply lain down in the snow. Berczeller traced her home address to the Shinjuku district of Tokyo using police records and managed to speak to her landlady. He said: 'Takako came to Tokyo from the country. She was a regular girl who came to the big city to live and try to live a good life and it all went wrong. 'She worked at a travel agency and lost that job and then apparently worked as a dancer. 'She met this guy and I don't know if she was obsessed with him or in love but everything went wrong. He was the last person she spoke to.'
target: Movie tells the incredible story of Takako Konishi, found frozen to death .
  Body was found in Detroit Lakes, 50 miles from Fargo, in November 2001 .
  Policeman she met thought she had been searching for suitcase of cash .
  Steve Buscemi's crook buried one in the snow in 1996 Coen brothers film .
  Rumour spread that Takako, 28, had tragically taken the tall tale to be true .
  Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter tells story of this amazing version of events .