The two short films I made independently in the 1990s were invited to numerous international film festivals,
and my second film, “If He Had Been Roberto”
won the Jury Prize in the US, the Editing and Soundtrack Awards in Belgium,
and also the Grand-Prix in Sweden, leading to an Academy Award nomination.
“Now I can compete on the world,” I thought, and worked hard to make my own feature film, but…

Fed up with the “invisible” nature of Japanese society and the film industry,
I left the country at the start of the 21st century, and spent over twenty-years mainly in Scandinavia and Southern Europe.
In early 2020, the so-called pandemic began,
and the face of Europe changed completely in the name of infectious disease prevention measures.
My wife and I decided to leave Europe, and returned to Japan in early 2023.

The Japanese film industry seems to resemble the current American automobile industry.
While mass-produced domestically and consumed to a certain extent, they are totally ignored outside of Japan…

Originally films (“EIGA” in Japan) are completely different from what is commonly referred to
as entertainment (“ENTAME” in Japan) or contents all lumped together nowadays.
To me, films are strictly art, the means of reconstructing the world through the eyes of the filmmaker.
Then, true art should be accepted all over the world, as if there were no borders.

I view the 20-plus years I spent away from Japan and filmmaking as a long interlude played between acts,
and from now on I wish to create a cinematic world transcending all boundaries,
including nationality, language, borders, age, and time and space.