Having a work screened at the distinguished Cannes Film Festival in France would be a dream come true for most filmmakers. Not only has Berlin-based director Yosuke Hosoi achieved this, but he did it within just seven years since moving to the U.S. to study filmmaking.
His film "Man of the House" was accepted for the Short Film Corner at Cannes in 2012. A family drama, it centers on the relationship of an elderly woman and her young bicultural grandchild — the son of a Japanese mother and American father. The father is visiting Japan on business when the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami hits, preventing him from returning to his family.
"It was actually my (university) graduation project, and it just happened that it was 2011, the year of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. My teachers advised me to choose a subject that was personal to me. I was close to my grandmother, and so I based my story around that relationship," Hosoi says.