The first director to directly message the cinematographer of Oscar winner Hamaguchi Ryusuke, and a former hunter whose film led Carlos Reygadas to the collaboration, were among five Nippon Cinema Now filmmakers who shared the unlikely connections behind their work at the 39th Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF).
Moderated by TIFF director of programming Ichiyama Shozo, the “How We Make Movies” panel held at Tokyo Midtown Hibiya brought together Ueda Shinichiro (“Earthlings in Love”), Saito Kisin (“Kefi”), Natori Satoshi (“Chihiro | Akemi”), Matsumura Shingo (“Among Us”), and Yaza Takenoshin (“Hinotama: Ball of Fire”) to discuss the making of their radically different features.
While introducing the participants, Ichiyama noted that although the selection generally focuses on new directors in Japanese cinema, he wanted to include Ueda because of the unique vertical format of his latest film, “Earthlings in Love.” Ueda explained that the film is a kind of adaptation born from a 30-episode microdrama series designed for social media, hence the vertical aspect ratio. But he said its budget was “equivalent to a normal independent film.” This sets it apart from most microdramas, which are usually very low budget anyway. “I’m from the theatrical film world, so in the beginning we were making it like a movie. […] that’s why it’s suitable for theatrical release,” Ueda said.
Ichiyama then introduced young cinematographer Saito’s feature film debut, “Kefi,” which he described as “a very unique, strange film” where “you never know what’s going on, but it all comes together in the end.” When asked how such a film came to be, Saito said that he met a producer responsible for production and film advertising, and he found a sponsor for the project. Saito said, “And so the sponsor had a theme for us, and we were going to make a movie based on that theme, and I agreed to that. But as we continued our discussion, the sponsor said we could do it any way we wanted. So it turned out to be a very strange movie.”
She said the original theme was “motherly love, being a mother.” The finished film tells the story of three sisters who receive the news of their father’s death. “They left it to us, so I added my preferences,” Saito said.
Moving on to “Chihiro | Akemi,” Natori talked about an important location in the film, a house in eastern Hokkaido.
“I wanted to make a movie that was basically about the distance between the forest and the house, going back and forth inside the house. I was a hunter myself, and through my hunting experiences I came up with all these ideas and tried to put them into this movie. You go out hunting, you look for prey, then you hunt, and then you eat the meat. And you keep doing it over and over again,” Natori said. “And so I compared this life to my life in Tokyo.”
Natori, who works as a director at an advertising company, said these social roles disappear in the wilds of Hokkaido. “I really felt like my personality was changing, and I was really interested in that change, like there was someone else inside me. I totally felt that uncanny feeling of someone else coming out of me, and I felt like that would be a really terrifying idea.” Natori said Nawata Canon, the film’s actor and producer, also incorporated his own experience in birthing the film.
Discussing its influences, Natori quotes Andrei Tarkovsky’s “Nostalghia,” calling it “essential” because it taught him that “plot is secondary.” According to him, the texture of the film is more important, color and style are equal to the story.
Natori also spoke about the film’s festival run, where it won the Grand Prize in feature film competition, including the Split Film Festival in Croatia. Thereupon, a meeting was held with Mexican director Carlos Reygadas, who was in the jury. “He came up to me and said, ‘Your movie is crazy. What’s going on here?’ he said. So he talked to me personally and wanted to collaborate with me. So next time it will potentially be Japan-Mexico cooperation,” Natori said.
The common theme of the panel was the freedom of every director to make the kind of film he wanted. Speaking about “Between Us,” Matsumura said that in a film that “focuses on theater and how theater and reality overlap,” it “was pretty freeing in terms of what I could do with the concepts.”
As Yaza described how she came to work with cinematographer Kitagawa Yoshio, known for his work with Hamaguchi, the conversation turned to taking the chance to approach collaborators.
“I had never done a feature film or anything that required a budget, so I didn’t really know how much it would cost or what the budget would be,” Yaza said. “But then I texted [Kitagawa] directly. “He also starred in many low-budget movies, so I was curious.”
He himself said that he never imagined that “the cinematographer of Hamaguchi’s film could join my project” and assumed that “there must be some kind of trick to making a film on a low budget like Hamaguchi.”
Yaza asked Kitagawa about making a film on a limited budget. This eventually led to a phone call in which the cinematographer offered to shoot the film and connected him with a producer who began contacting financiers. “This was my first set because I had never been on a movie set before,” Yaza said. “I was also the youngest person on set and it was a very generous environment. [one] “We kept an open mind and were able to have fun to the fullest.”
Natori’s thoughts on what is most important in feature filmmaking seemed to reflect the distinctive appeal of the Nippon Cinema Now selection as a whole. “I think it’s important for you to make a feature film that you’ll be happy with,” he said, “and you can only do that because it’s your first time.”