From Carlos Reygadas to Hamaguchi’s Cinematographer, Tokyo’s Nippon Cinema Now Directors on Unexpected Connections

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 (TIFF).

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”) to discuss the making of their radically different features.

As he introduced the participants, Ichiyama noted that although the selection typically focuses on newer directors in Japanese cinema, he was interested in bringing Ueda in because of the unique vertical format of his latest film, “Earthlings in Love.” Ueda explained that the film was an adaptation of sorts, born from 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 already 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.

Ichiyama then introduced “Kefi,” a debut feature by young cinematographer Saito, which he described as “a very unique, strange film,” one where “you never know what’s happening, but at the end, it all comes together.” Asked how such a film came about, Saito said he had met a producer in charge of production and movie advertising, who found a sponsor for the project. “And so the sponsor had a theme for us, and based on that theme, we were going to make a film, and I agreed to it. But 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,” Saito said.

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

Moving on to “Chihiro | Akemi,” Natori spoke about a key location in the film, 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. 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, who used to work as a director at an advertising company, said that in the Hokkaido wilderness, those social roles were stripped away. “I really felt like my personality changed, and I was really interested in that shift, as if there was another person inside me. I fully felt this uncanny feeling of somebody else emerging from inside me, and I felt like this would be a really terrifying idea.” Nawata Canon, an actor and producer on the film, also incorporated her own experience of giving birth into it, Natori said.

Discussing his influences, Natori cited Andrei Tarkovsky’s “Nostalghia,” calling it “foundational” because it taught him that “the plot is secondary.” To him, the texture of a film matters more, and color and style are equivalent to story.

Natori also spoke about the film’s festival run, including the Split Film Festival in Croatia, where it won the Grand Prix in the feature film competition. That led to a meeting with Mexican director Carlos Reygadas, who was on the 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.

A common theme of the panel was the freedom to make the kind of film each director wanted. Speaking about “Between Us,” Matsumura said that “it 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.”

The conversation turned to taking a chance on approaching collaborators, with Yaza describing 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, he said, 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.”

Yaza asked Kitagawa about making films on a tight budget. That eventually led to a call in which the cinematographer offered to shoot the film and connected him 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 thoughts on what matters most in feature filmmaking seemed to capture the idiosyncratic appeal of the Nippon Cinema Now selection as a whole. “I think it’s important for you to make a feature-length film that you will be satisfied by,” he said, “that you can only do because it’s your first time.”