At Tokyo Film Festival, Five Directors on Luck, Risk and Reach

By Marcus Bennett

A first-time director who messaged Oscar winner Hamaguchi Ryusuke's cinematographer directly, and a former hunter whose film led Carlos Reygadas to float a collaboration, were among five Nippon Cinema Now filmmakers who shared the unexpected connections behind their work at the 39th Tokyo International Film Festival.

The "How We Make Films" panel at Tokyo Midtown Hibiya, moderated by TIFF programming director Ichiyama Shozo, brought together Ueda Shinichiro ("Earthlings in Love"), Saito Kisin ("Kefi"), Natori Satoshi ("Chihiro | Akemi"), Matsumura Shingo ("Between Us") and Yaza Takenoshin ("Hinotama: Ball of Fire"). Each traced a different route into feature filmmaking.

Why shoot a feature vertically?

Ichiyama noted that the selection typically focuses on newer directors, but he wanted Ueda because of the vertical format of "Earthlings in Love." Ueda explained the film grew out of a 30-episode microdrama series designed for social media, hence the vertical aspect ratio. Its budget, though, was "equivalent to a regular independent film," he said. That sets it apart from most microdramas, which are typically very low-budget.

"I'm from the theatrical film world, so we were making it as if it were a film to start with [...] so it became appropriate for a theatrical release," Ueda said.

How did a sponsor's brief become a 'strange film'?

Ichiyama introduced "Kefi," a debut feature by young cinematographer Saito, as "a very unique, strange film" where "you never know what's happening, but at the end, it all comes together." Saito said a producer he met found a sponsor who supplied a theme. "As we continued our discussion, the sponsor said that we could make it as we like. So it turned out to be a very strange film," he said.

The original theme was "maternal love, being a mother." The finished film instead follows three sisters after they receive news of their father's passing. "They kind of left it to us, so I kind of just added my preferences," Saito said.

What does hunting have to do with filmmaking?

Natori spoke about a key location in "Chihiro | Akemi": a house in eastern Hokkaido. "I wanted to shoot a film that is basically about the distance between the woods and the house, just going back and forth from the house," he said.

"I myself used to be a hunter, and with the experiences from hunting, I came up with all these ideas, and I tried to put them in this film. You go out hunting, you look for prey, and then you hunt, and then you eat the meat. And you continue this over and over again," Natori said. "And I kind of compared that life and the life that I have in Tokyo."

Natori, once a director at an advertising company, said the Hokkaido wilderness stripped those social roles away. "I fully felt this uncanny feeling of somebody else emerging from inside me, and I felt like this would be a really terrifying idea," he said. Actor and producer Nawata Canon incorporated her own experience of giving birth into the film.

Among his influences, Natori cited Andrei Tarkovsky's "Nostalghia" as "foundational" because it taught him that "the plot is secondary." Texture, color and style, he argued, are equivalent to story.

The film's festival run included the Split Film Festival in Croatia, where it won the Grand Prix in the feature competition. Reygadas sat on that jury. "He came up to me and he said, 'Your film is crazy. What's going on here?' So he personally talked to me and wanted to collaborate with me. So for the next one, potentially it's going to be a Japan-Mexico collaboration," Natori said.

What does a cold message get you?

A common theme of the panel was freedom. Matsumura said "Between Us" "was very much free in terms of what I could do with the concepts," in a film that "focused on theater and how the theater and reality overlap."

Yaza described how he came to work with cinematographer Kitagawa Yoshio, known for his work with Hamaguchi. "I had never done a feature-length film or anything that required a budget, so I didn't really know how much it would cost or what the budget would look like," Yaza said. "But then I messaged [Kitagawa] directly. He has also done many low-budget films, and so I was curious."

He never imagined that "the cinematographer for Hamaguchi's film would be able to join my project," and assumed "there must be some kind of trick to make films with a low budget like Hamaguchi does." A call followed in which Kitagawa offered to shoot the film and connected Yaza with a producer, who began approaching financiers. "It was my first set because I've never been on a film set before," Yaza said. "I was also the youngest person on set, and it was a very generous environment, [one] with an open mind, and we were able to enjoy ourselves until the end."

Natori's closing thought captured the selection's idiosyncratic appeal: "I think it's important for you to make a feature-length film that you will be satisfied by, that you can only do because it's your first time."