Marina Tsukada lets local lives shape her work

Japanese director interviews these days usually follow a set format: Meet at the distributor’s office and, with a PR rep or two present, rattle off as many questions as you can in your allotted 30 minutes (sometimes 15). Bow and leave.

My Q&A session with Marina Tsukada, director of the two-part anthology film “Mitsuki, Sekai,” was different. First, we met at a small theater in Tokyo’s Otsuka neighborhood, where the film will open on Sept. 21 and where Tsukada herself had once worked. Second, next to the table where we talked was a baby carriage in which her 8-month-old son was sleeping — temporarily. Midway through the interview, he decided to join us and his mother barely missed a beat as she picked him up and calmed him.

Allowing real life to shape her work was also Tsukada’s method in scripting and directing “Mitsuki, Sekai”; she shot the anthology’s two parts separately and later combined them into a feature. Set in her native Nagano Prefecture, the film might be described as a sidebar to an ongoing project called “Toki” (Time) that traces the lives of local children for a decade until they reach adulthood. “Mitsuki,” completed in 2020, won the Best Asian Short prize at the Spain Moving Images Festival, while the 2022 “Sekai” was selected for the Rotterdam International Film Festival.

Tsukada tells me she began thinking about “Toki” in 2017. “I wrote the script based on my own life,” she says. She started shooting in 2021 and, four years later, is still going to Nagano to film four times a year. “I go in the winter, spring, summer and fall for about two days each time,” she explains.

The idea for “Mitsuki” and “Sekai” came from Tsukada’s acquaintance with the two young lead actors, whom she first met at a video workshop she conducted in Nagano and are now participating in “Toki.” “They didn’t audition,” she says. “It was more that they wanted to make a film with me and I invited them to do it.”

“Mitsuki” follows the eponymous junior high school girl’s daily routine, including a visit to her dementia-afflicted grandmother in a nursing home. At the end, we hear Mitsuki’s inner monologue as she privately dances out the thoughts and emotions these interactions have aroused.

The film’s lead is also named Mitsuki, and the script, Tsukada says, reflects her actual personality. “It's as if the script were written by Mitsuki herself and she is playing herself using her real name,” she comments.

The longer “Sekai” focuses on Aki, again played by a nonprofessional actor (Aki Wakui) under her own first name, who has a stutter that causes problems for her at school. At home, however, she reads voraciously with her bedridden grandmother at her side and, despite her challenges, sees the world beyond her veranda with bright, accepting eyes.

There is a parallel story about the adult Yumi (played by singer-songwriter Yumi Tamai), whose once-promising musical career is now on hold. At the end, the two stories connect with Yumi seeing something of her younger self in Aki, who still has her life ahead of her and has hope for her future.

“I’ve found that adults are encouraged by children,” Tsukada says. “And that’s the case with Yumi. When I see children, I think about the future of the world and the future of the children themselves.”

Traveling with both films abroad, Tsukada says she was pleased by the reaction of overseas audiences. “I was most happy when they told me that Mitsuki was beautiful, or that Aki was beautiful, or that Yumi was beautiful. I thought that the beauty of a child is something that everyone sees, regardless of language or culture. As long as I can capture that beauty, I’m satisfied with my work.”