A semi-autobiographical tale set over the course of a single day in the Nigerian metropolis Lagos during the 1993 Nigerian election crisis. The story follows a father, estranged from his two young sons, as they travel through the massive city while political unrest threatens their journey home. Ahead of the film's 2025 Toronto International Film Festival North American premiere here is an exclusive clip:
Anker is released from prison following a fifteen-year sentence for robbery. The money from the heist was buried by Anker’s brother, Manfred. Only he knows where it is. Unfortunately, Manfred has since developed a mental illness causing him to forget all. Together, the brothers embark on an unexpected journey to locate the money and discover who they really are. The Last Viking is an offbeat, intriguing, and devious comedy about identity.
Here is an exclusive clip:
Why did you choose Naples as the protagonist, as it were, of Below The Clouds? What attracted you to making a documentary about the city?
Naples, the Phlegraean Fields and Mount Vesuvius form an immense basin of stories. It is a place that moves continuously between surface and depth: ruins, subterranean spaces, clouds, fumaroles, tremors of the earth. But it is equally shaped by the everyday glances that pass between its people: children, archaeologists, firefighters, teachers, sailors. In this territory, there are areas of passage between what is and what could be. There are those who investigate, like the prosecutor; those who preserve fragments of memory, like Mary, the curator at the museum; and many anonymous faces that together draw an affective and moral map. Below The Clouds passes over a world that prefers to hide rather than show itself. It shows characters suspended between past and present, between light and shadow.
Can you tell us about your artistic process? How do you find your stories and protagonists? And how do you go about capturing your images?
Making my films is always a drawn-out process during which indispensable bonds are born. I actively looked for stories and people, but at the same time, I let myself be guided by what I found. The camera becomes a tool for meeting people, and mutual trust grows with the time we spend together. Only then does the time come to film, when the relationship has become alive and authentic.
Naples is usually seen as a city of Mediterranean light and color. Why did you choose to film in black and white?
Cocteau wrote that Vesuvius produces all the clouds in the world. Those clouds led me to the title and the look of the film. Below the clouds, light changes its nature: there are no shadows, and everything shows itself in another form. Black and white has allowed me to give a different definition, to look for a deeper truth in the image than the places, bodies, gestures themselves. Black and white opens up the imagination, it engages you to look at things in a different way. I can't imagine this film in color.
Your films rely exclusively on your images to make their meanings clear, without extraneous explanations. What does that mean for the way you edit your material?
I already started to edit while I was filming. Places, people and actions met in front of the camera and immediately afterwards in the editing room. Editing was not a separate task, but a rewrite that accompanied the film as it took shape. For three years, filming and editing walked hand in hand, day after day, until they became Below The Clouds.
How did your collaboration with Daniel Blumberg (winner of the Academy Award for Best Original Score 2025 for The Brutalist come about? What did he add to the texture of the film?
I have known Daniel for more than 14 years and I really love his experimental music. When I thought of the music for the final scene of the film I could only think of him. My need was not to have a soundtrack, but rather to imagine a soundscape capable of creating a suspended space in certain moments of the film. A fabric of traces, sounds, music where the instruments themselves become unrecognizable while drawing a sonic landscape.
You seem to be especially interested in transitions - between the Ganges and the city of Benares in BOATMAN; between Rome and its surroundings in Sacro Gra; the movement of refugees in Fuocoammare; the borderlands of Syria, Iraq, Kurdistan and Lebanon in Notturno. The Naples of Below The Clouds is also a city of peripheries. What interests you about working in the margins?
For me, the margin is a passage, a contact area. Documenting these places of connection and transition means asking questions and imagining a space in which the paths that intersect become the very form of the film.
All your films, while tied to a specific locale, are informed by global politics. Below The Clouds, among other things, shows the unexpected traces in the city’s fabric of the wars in Syria and Ukraine, for example. Did you consider these links in your original idea for the film, or did it emerge while filming?
Naples and the Vesuvius territory are imbued with the histories of thousands of years: peoples, eruptions, domination. This history continues to live in underground tunnels, museums, buildings. The film tells everyday stories and lives in a time that seems to have little of the ordinary, as the news constantly proves. In a planet that is becoming smaller and smaller, great history is intertwined with the daily events of men and women, generating anxiety, fragility, but also a new awareness.
The present bursts in everywhere: in a port city, for example, you encounter routes of people and goods, events near and far that intertwine. Wars, exploitation, past and present conflicts: filming the present means allowing yourself to be challenged by it all.
Winner of the Grand Prix at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival for Oldboy, winner of the Cannes Special Jury Prize in 2009 for Thirst, invited to the Main Competition in 2016 with The Handmaiden, and winner of the Best Director Award at Cannes in 2022 with Decision to Leave… Master director Park Chan-wook, who has captivated audiences with his taboo- breaking plots and finely rendered mise-en-scène, is back. With No Other Choice – a story he has long wanted to tell– he presents a film that is completely different from his previous works.
No Other Choice is the story of Man-su, an employee at a paper company who is so satisfied with his life that he can truthfully say to himself, “I’ve got it all.” However, after suddenly being fired, he finds himself in a battle to get re-hired in order to keep the family home he has worked so hard to buy, and to protect his wife and two children. No Other Choice depicts, through the unique perspective of director PARK Chan wook, how an ordinary person tries to overcome the crisis of being suddenly fired and draws deep empathy from the audience through its realistic situations that anyone in modern times could go through. As Man-su faces increasingly cutthroat competition to be re-hired, he comes to consider resorting to extreme measures. The inner conflict he experiences pulls the audience into a tense and unpredictable narrative.
Director Park Chan-wook’s sharp sense of ironic humor instills the distinctive appeal in No Other Choice. The film has an attractive cast of characters that add richness to the drama, including Miri, the strong wife who finds herself facing a crisis; Sun-chul, line manager at the highly successful Moon Paper, Man-su’s aspiration; Bummo and Sijo, job seekers who compete with Man-su for open positions; and Bummo’s wife Ara. With dramatic developments that oscillate between tension and release, sensuous mise-en- scène and meticulous directing, added with black comedy, No Other Choice is a truly original film that will captivate audiences in Korea and around the world
Where does this story of a failed old poet come from? What did you want to explore?
It’s the most personal project I’ve ever made. It began with an intimate question: what if I failed at art? Making films in Colombia is incredibly difficult, and after my first feature, I seriously considered giving up. I pictured myself at fifty, making a living as a teacher — which, in fact, is still how I pay the bills — and surviving on idealized memories of a past life in art. I also wanted to explore art from the inside: what it means to create, the limitations it imposes, the compromises it demands. The film grew out of a kind of exhaustion with the machinery of art, and from a longing to make something free, unshaped, with a spirit that felt almost punk. It was a way of reconnecting with what cinema once meant to me. Rather than portray myself as a filmmaker, I chose the figure of a poet, because being a poet is, if anything, even more utopian.
The film asks what art is and what it’s for. And it explores these questions through poetry, the least industrial form of art there is.
Art is often seen as something noble, but it’s also an industry, even when it’s independent. In cinema, for instance, there’s a market that dictates what audiences expect to see: certain patterns repeat, especially in Latin American cinema. As an artist, you must decide whether to cater to this external demand or question what truly drives you. I wanted to return to something more pure: a raw, visceral form of art that’s less mechanical. That’s when poetry emerged. It wasn’t a strategic choice, but an intuitive one. In my city, Medellín, I have met many poets who don’t fit the idealized mold. They’re streetwise, punk, very real, and I found them more fascinating than the filmmaker figure. Poetry has an anachronistic quality — it feels as though it still exists in the past, and that aspect resonated with me for this story. For instance, poetry readings seem almost timeless, removed from the idea of art as something utilitarian or marketable. Within that realm, there are contradictions and a very specific kind of humor that I wanted to explore through dark comedy.
The bond between Óscar and Yurlady is central to the film. What did you hope to explore through their teacher-student relationship? Is there a form of mutual salvation in it?
Yes, absolutely. Through that relationship, I wanted to explore several dilemmas I encounter in making art, especially in a place like Colombia, where social inequalities are so pronounced. Art, and cinema in particular, often operates within a logic where the creator, from a more privileged position, transforms the “other,” the less privileged character, into raw material for their work. This raises an uncomfortable question: how do you represent that “other” without stripping them of their true essence? The relationship between Óscar and Yurlady helped me address that, because she’s neither an idealized figure nor a great literary prodigy; she simply writes because she enjoys it, because she needs to. On the other hand, he’s worn out, disillusioned. In their encounter, I believe they illuminate each other: she embodies a purer, freer form of art, less contaminated by the market or the need for validation. And that forces him to confront what he’s lost. So yes, there’s a kind of mutual salvation, but not in a romantic sense, more as a chance to reconnect with what’s truly essential.
A Poet moves between comedy and drama, parody and tragedy, in a very delicate balance. How did you manage to mix those tones?
I didn’t have a clear formula, to be honest. I relied a lot on intuition. Even while writing, I was already envisioning small gags and subtle comedic moments, trusting they would work once filmed. But that’s something you never really know until the film meets the audience, so I’m still waiting to see. With this second film, I primarily wanted to enjoy the process. With the first one, I was extremely stressed, full of anxiety. This time, I aimed to make the experience enjoyable, even liberating — like a personal exorcism. Comedy helped with that: it allowed me to play, to laugh at myself, at what it means to be an artist. And at the same time, to use comedy as a means of addressing serious topics. Hopefully, that mix works, because for me, it was essential not to create a rigid film, but one that could move freely across different registers.
Your film might evoke New York Jewish comedy — with the clarinet leitmotif in the soundtrack — or a certain kind of Argentine humor. Do you recognize those influences?
Yes, absolutely. In fact, it was really difficult to finance the film because of that. A Colombian comedy about poets didn’t fit the stereotypes the market expects from a film made in my country. People told us it felt like an Argentine comedy or a Woody Allen film, and of course, when that kind of movie comes from Argentina, it makes sense and sells. But when it comes from Colombia, no one knows what to do with it. There are clear nods to the comedies you mentioned: the clarinet is an obvious parody, an absurd homage to that world of New York poets, so intellectual and sophisticated, but it’s placed in a completely different context, embodied by a guy from Medellín, nostalgic, a little pathetic, pretending to be Bukowski. That dissonance felt both funny and powerful to me, playing with the contrast between what the character thinks he is and what he truly is. That tension is very much present in the film’s overall tone.
How did you find Ubeimar Ríos and what made you trust him with the lead role?
He’s the uncle of a friend, and one day my friend told me, “Look, this is your poet,” and sent me his profile. Ubeimar is a schoolteacher who lives in a town outside Medellín, writes columns for local newspapers, has an interest in poetry and music, and organizes cultural events. He has a unique way of speaking and moving that I found fascinating. Initially, I didn’t cast him because I was set on working with professional actors. In previous projects, I had worked with non-professionals, and this time I wanted to try something different. But Ubeimar stuck with me, and I called him back. He was recovering from surgery, so we went to the finca where he lives to do a casting, and it was obvious: there was an immediate, intuitive connection with the character. What happened next was beautiful: Óscar, in the script, was a less likable character, but Ubeimar brought a humanity to him that wasn’t written. During the shoot, everyone grew fond of him. That changed everything. His presence softened the character, and despite his flaws, he became more endearing.
And Rebeca Andrade, who plays Yurlady? Why did you choose her?
The process with Rebeca was lengthy, especially in understanding the character. We held auditions at schools and high schools across Medellín for a long time. We saw many girls, but we finally found her in a public school. From there, we began an intensive preparation process with both actors, along with a coach and a team that worked with them for two months. It was a very constructive process — we went over each scene, one by one. Ubeimar had to temporarily leave his teaching job to fully commit to this acting training. It was a huge transformation. That’s when I realized that, in the end, it’s not about finding actors or non-actors, it’s about finding the right person for the character.
Where did you shoot the film? Is there also a social portrait, a view of class and its tensions in the film?
Yes, absolutely. We shot in Medellín, which is where I live and where I’ve made all my films. And from the start I wanted to highlight the difference in social classes. Óscar comes from a middle-class background, while Yurlady comes from a lower one. That tension is very common in Medellín, a city with very marked social contrasts. I wanted to address that conflict through comedy. There’s a reflection on art and its social dilemmas, on how art confronts, or doesn’t confront, those tensions. In Latin America, art tends to be very political, very social, and I wanted to play with that: with the expectation that a Colombian film must address certain themes, in a certain way.
Why was it important to shoot on 16mm?
I was looking for an aesthetic that evoked the past, because these poets are somewhat from another era. On the other hand, the film talks about certain dilemmas of middle- aged men, that time between youth and adulthood when you already start to feel outdated. I’m 39 and I’m in that place too, between two generations. I sometimes find myself rejecting the new, and other times the old. It made sense for everything to have a slightly outdated texture. Shooting on 16mm helped give the film’s world a kind of ’80s look, gritty, rough, a bit like John Cassavetes. We didn’t want a clean, shiny, digital image. We wanted something uglier, more imperfect, adding another aesthetic and emotional layer to the film. And, of course, it was a personal pleasure: shooting on 16mm is a very special experience for any filmmaker.
It’s also a story of reconciliation between a father and a daughter. Were you interested in showing that through a surrogate figure, this “false daughter” embodied by Yurlady?
The father is usually a distant figure, and the artist even more so. There’s this very strong cliché: the Bukowski-type artist is always a bad father, disastrous, egocentric. You know, all those clichés of manhood and artistry. And while I didn’t want to completely deny them, I was interested in showing something else: fragility. For me, this was the least interesting character to build a story around, because he’s not someone who draws attention. But maybe that’s what attracted me most: trying to find some beauty in that man, however small. It was also a kind of exorcism: I wanted to portray my own flaws, doubts, and contradictions.
The film was completed in early 2025 and is already selected at Cannes. Why such a fast production process?
Yes, it was very rushed. We started shooting on January 14 and wrapped around February 16, planning to take a lot of time for editing... but that didn’t happen. We also wanted to break away from today’s highly structured filmmaking logic: labs, workshops, residencies. Everything is so regulated. And sometimes the most important thing is just to make the film, even if it’s not perfect. After shooting, I locked myself in for a month to edit with Ricardo, the editor. We managed to finish a first cut, although we knew it wasn’t completely ready. Then we had to decide: keep editing or send it to Cannes? In the end we submitted it — past the deadline, I have to say — and it was crazy because they had already announced part of the official selection. But they watched it, were interested, and invited us. If they hadn’t selected it, we would’ve kept working on it. And even now, I’m not sure it was the best decision, because we’re still racing against the clock, finishing postproduction. But I think that unfinished quality suits the film’s aesthetic. In most cases, you can only make a movie every three or four years. I’d like to shoot more often, even if with less. That’s why I felt okay letting this one go, even if it wasn’t perfect — that’s probably what defines it.
The Love That Remains can be seen as a departure from many of your previous films, particularly from the epic scope of Godland – what made you want to jump into such a thematically and aesthetically different film?
I don’t like to have too many preconceived intentions because I want my films to be honest, spontaneous, and as close as possible to the actual human experience. The topics are always broad and numerous. This film is about nature, about what we build, re-build or destroy, about what unites and divides us, miscommunication and conflicting feelings. But it is above all about family, that is the core of the film and its beating heart – which is a natural extension of my previous films, both short and long.
We tend to think that what matters in the world is the big picture, like politics, but to me, in a way, the most important things as human beings are the small and intimate ones, the ones close to us: your relationship with your family, your siblings, your children, nature, the place you inhabit. After Godland, my desire was to tell a story set in the present day, exploring the times we live in. I wanted to shoot what is close to me, around me, in the garden, without having to build or recreate anything. To show things, not in an artificial way, but as they truly are. Working with the intimate, the mundane or even the ugly – not something epic, perfect or outstanding – was both a want and a need. It’s a film about the intimate, the familiar and the strange – there is a dreamy aspect, but I also wanted everything to be fluid, to constantly move like water.
Audiences are bound to wonder to what degree the film is autobiographical. Even if it is not, what made you want to write and direct a more personal film, closer in many ways to your own life?
All of my films are personal, because the crew and the cast are often people who are close to me, and even the locations, the houses, the cars... they’re all things that I find around me. It was already the case for my previous features, but this one might indeed be the most personal – along with my short film Nest – because my three children are in it.
The idea for The Love that Remains came to me during the process of shooting Nest – in which I filmed the kids playing in a tree house over a period of a year and a half. While filming, I started wondering what the parents were doing in the meantime, since they were always off-screen: they are referred to, but never seen. That’s when I started imagining different narrative threads, intertwined, that would enhance one another.
I originally intended to make Nest a part of the feature but time flew by, I shot Godland, and the short movie became its own thing. So I started developing another story connected to the core of The Love that Remains: the kids constructing the figure of a knight, as time passes and the seasons change. I wanted these scenes to resonate with the central thread of The Love that Remains, which offered endless, exciting possibilities.
We started shooting those scenes (part of a short film entitled Joan of Arc) two years ago, while we were developing the feature. Other images of the feature were also shot before principal photography, because I always have a camera with me and need to film what’s going on around me, in real life. This is the case, for instance, for the images of the roof being taken apart. My process is always very open, it’s impossible to know exactly what’s going to happen.
The depiction of the relationship, its complexities and grey areas feels extremely authentic. Even in separation there is love. How did you strike this balance?
From the beginning of development, it was clear to me that I didn’t want the film to be unequivocal, to settle on just one side. Because in real life, you want something and at the same time you don’t want it, you constantly have one feeling and its opposite. Everybody is fragile and complex and that’s what makes a character interesting. The film had to remain open to interpretation, both emotionally and story-wise. Nobody is just the good guy or the bad guy. When it comes to the parents going through a separation, the important thing is not why they’re splitting, or whether they’ll get back together, I’m not giving or looking for any answers or explanations.
The film is about how we spend our time: what’s important, really? The time you spend with your family, with those you love, the memories you create. It’s about life itself, about memory and the sense
of belonging. What happens to a family when they split, what happens to all the memories and moments they shared? What happens to the love that remains?
Love can only be known by its absence. We become immune to its presence, it’s sometimes difficult to see the love around you or the beauty in life. That’s what I wanted to try and tackle, that’s what I want the audience to feel. Maybe if people just tended to their garden, respected their neighbors, their children and nature, the world would be a better place. But everything and everyone has a darker side, and I don’t want my films to convey a glamorized image of life.
Life is both light and dark, funny and brutal, full of contrasts. Even children, as we see in the film, are both capable of creating and destroying. Violence is a deep part of humanity, we’re an incredibly brutal species. This is also interesting. Life and people can both take a turn for the worse very quickly. Like a lot of people, I often have the feeling that the world is falling apart, and it’s impossible to make a film that is not coloured by that.
A through line in the film is the artist’s struggle for recognition, understanding; in parallel with the daily struggles of life. Why was the artist’s journey, and the art itself, important to bring into the film?
One of the characters, who’s an artist and a mother of three who just split up with their father, is struggling in many ways. Not only for recognition, but above all because she’s looking for meaning, trying to be a part of the world in a way that stimulates her. She is working a lot while taking care of her children and making their world go round too. She’s probably handling everything, all of the small things, while attempting to figure out what she wants, what her own thing can be. And when she fails, she keeps going and tries again.
Her artistic process is very physical. It’s actually my own process: every autumn I leave a series of art works outside over the cold months, and I collect them before it gets too warm and moist. It’s a nice process to look at: you draw, cut out the forms in the iron, lay them on the ground, then collect them, clean them, dry them... A lot of the things that happen in the movie in this regard, such as when she discovers the horses have ruined part of her work, or when a goose lays her eggs at the same spot, actually happened to me.
So the film is also about an artist trying to figure out how to work in this world, how to work on the things she loves and to live an interesting and meaningful life, to create a routine she finds exciting. And of course it’s hard to do the things you want to do and still be able to pay the bills and take care of your family. I was exploring all of that with her character, and sometimes also having fun, because part of being an artist is managing to show your art too. That’s why I wrote the scenes with the gallery owner – which are crazy, but then again, the world is crazier than most films.
But hers is not the only search for meaning. It is juxtaposed with Magnús’ journey: a fisherman, her ex-fiancé and the father of the three children. Magnus is still having a difficult time navigating his feelings. We feel his underlying anger, but also his sadness, his struggle with the separation. His feeling of being excluded from the family’s daily life. The world he had built is falling apart. But he’s trying to hold on to it, while also trying to find his place in his new life.
Your real children have now appeared in most of your films, including this one. What was special about shooting with them for The Love That Remains?
This is the first feature in which the three of them all appear, and moreover they had a big responsibility. They’re a big part of the film, with long scenes. They’re the third thread of the film – the three siblings and their process of building a figure (a knight) and firing arrows at it. We spend time with and gradually learn to know them and their own perception of what it means to struggle in life. Their energy was crucial for me, I don’t think I would have been able to make this film without those three crazy kids and their raw, wild energy. It was a lot of fun, and it was easy to include them because they already knew pretty much everybody on set. Everything felt very homemade.
There’s something gentle in all aspects of this film. Did you also have to be gentler in your approach?
Each project has a fragile, strange temperament, a personality. It’s often an idiosyncratic thing you have to take care of, so that it doesn’t fall off and die. There is always a core, and you have to find a way to lift it and make it shine.
What was important here was to create a nice, safe atmosphere for the actors and the crew to work and play together. I wanted as small a crew as possible on set, just a couple of people running around. A stripped down, very free shooting. I wrote the script with that idea in mind, without scenes that would be complicated to film, no big set ups. Just the camera, a light tripod, almost no lights. In all aspects, it had to be simple and straightforward, in order to capture the specific energy of the film and to balance everything in the right way – the crazy and the funny, the beautiful and the ugly, the family and nature, the siblings and the parents...That’s what I thought about the most: to keep the core of the film alive, to keep the energy right, to keep having fun. Because it’s so easy to kill a film.
Why use the cycle of the seasons to give a rhythm to the film? And how does this connect to some of the film’s most universal themes – rural life, the passing of time, or raising children?
Time is the filmmaker’s main medium and I want to explore that in as many ways as possible. I enjoy writing and filming over a long period of time and using it as a foundation, like a narrative thread throughout the movie. When you’re working on a film you’re always thinking about it and everything reminds you of it, you see and capture something you saw or heard outside and immediately start writing a scene mentally. This allows me to dream deeper, to lose myself in the project, which is what I love the most about the process. If you do that, it’s effortless, you don’t have to force anything, to force a narrative, what happens just emerges naturally. Being surprised is a huge part of my exploration as a filmmaker.
An additional ‘presence’ in the film, almost a character, a narrator, is the music of Harry Hunt. How did it become such a fundamental part of the film?
At first, I thought there would be no music in the film except for the diegetic music. But then I heard an album called Playing Piano for Dad by h hunt, and I started listening to it again and again while watching the dailies of the film without the sound. There was a lot of material and we needed to make decisions for the editing, and the atmosphere of the album seemed to fit extremely well with our images. So I contacted him, we got along really well and talked about how we could collaborate on the movie. We used this music way more than we thought we would, because it worked so well – also thanks to my editor Julius Krebs Damsbo, who is brilliant when it comes to using music. He knew I wanted h hunt’s music from the beginning of the editing process and we ended up using almost the whole album.
The Love That Remains feels like a story that you might have to “find” rather than to plan. Did the film change a lot as you were shooting, editing? How did you go about the shoot and what was the process of working with the actors?
The interesting thing is that many people think that the script was very different from the final form of the film, but it’s not. The only big difference is the addition of the scenes with the children and the knight. I think it’s because by the time we started principal photography, I had been developing it for a long time, I was ready to film it; we were already deep inside the project and able to stick to it – while keeping a form of freedom, of course. Regarding the actors, we didn’t have a lot of rehearsals but we did work together before filming, in order for them to be comfortable together. It was really important to me that you could really believe they were a family, joking around, spending good and hard times together.
A magical and beautifully animated journey through time, Arco is a dazzling adventure about a 10-year-old boy from a peaceful, distant future who accidentally travels back to the year 2075 and discovers a world in peril. As Arco develops a charming and touching friendship with a young girl named Iris, they band together and along with her trusted robot caretaker Mikki, set out on a quest to get Arco home, while the two children may also be the only ones who can save our planet. A wondrous odyssey filled with hope and optimism for our future, Arco is an enchanting fable from breakout filmmaker Ugo Bienvenu, produced by Remembers’ Bienvenu and Felix de Givry, and mountainA’s Natalie Portman and Sophie Mas.Ahead of Arco's North American premiere at the 50th edition of the Toronto International Film Festival here is the official trailer:
About 15 years ago, I had the idea of making a movieabout onnagata [male actors who play female characters] in kabuki performances. I did a lot of research and got deeper into the world of kabuki. In retrospect, maybe my film, Kokuho, emerged from this early conception. Originally, I intended to write a story modeled on an actual actor, but I didn’t know where to go from there. At the time, the project was too ambitious for me to handle.
Then I had an opportunity to speak with the novelist, Shūichi Yoshida, whose novel, Villain,I’d adapted into a movie. I mentioned my idea about a kabuki-themed movie and he seemed interested. A few years later, I heard about his new novel which would be serialized in a newspaper. It was about kabuki, which intrigued me. With no objective in mind, I was keen to know how Yoshida would depict the world of kabuki and what story he would tell. I didn’t immediately think of adapting his novel, KOKUHO, because my earlier attempt hadn’t worked out. Then I observed enthusiasm building around the idea of making Kokuho into a movie until it slowly distilled into reality.
I was cautious but I was certain of one thing. The movie could only proceed if we could find an actor capable of portraying the protagonist, Kikuo, as he would carry the movie. Then I had a fortunate encounter with the actor, Ryō Yoshizawa. Without exaggeration, the project would have
ended if not for Yoshizawa. It went ahead because we had him; Ryō Yoshizawa is the movie. Kikuo, the character that Yoshizawa played, would be the spine of the story. If I had just picked up episodes related to Kikuo from the novel, the movie risked being just a catalog of events in Kikuo’s life. I decided to focus on his journey of ups and downs, on the arc of his life and where it draws him and where he ends up. That would shape the movie. As the son of a gang boss, Kikuo’s life revolves around the blessings and curses of lineage as he dives into the world of kabuki.
That was the plot but what was more essential to show was Kikuo’s soulful connection with Shunsuke. There’s a ying/yang component to their relationship and their souls appear to meld on stage. With that in mind, when we developed the screenplay, I carefully extracted scenes from various kabuki acts that would symbolically show the highs and lows of the two men’s lives together and how they become one in communion. Kikuo and Shunsuke are immersed in the unique world of kabuki where the art is passed on through succession. Preserving the intangible art of kabuki through generations of actors. My initial interest in onnagata probably explains my fascination with kabuki. There is a timeless quality to onnagata, they’re an androgynous depiction of other. They’re atypical, in a class of their own. They’re sensual in a sophisticated way and if I may say...the sensuality strikes you unexpectedly. I don’t know where it comes from, maybe from the corporeal intensive training? But I was firm on NOT employing trained kabuki actors as dance doubles for Ryō Yoshizawa and Ryusei Yokohama [who played Shunsuke]. I was convinced that having these two actors perform the kabuki acts would breathe life into the movie adaptation and keep it authentic. The character of Kikuo is on a life-long quest to find an allusive “scenery”. I’ve come to believe that it’s the same scenery that Ryō Yoshizawa would have seen as he tackled the demanding role of a kabuki actor.
With Executive Producer Sarah Dillard Mitchell
Director Robert Aaron Mitchell
Here is the post-screening Q&A
