SINGAPORE, Nov 1 — As his films evolve, so does he.

In his interviews over the years, Hirokazu Koreeda has extensively shared how loss and change has impacted the way he makes his films, and his newest one Look Back is no different.

The critically acclaimed Japanese director was recently in Singapore to receive the Cinema Honorary Award from Singapore International Film Festival (SGIFF).

He sat down with local media at Shangri-La Hotel for a roundtable interview on Oct 23, where he shared his thoughts on adapting Look Back from its original work, a manga (comic) by Tatsuki Fujimoto.

The manga and film follow two girls, Fujino and Kyomoto, over the course of 13 years.

In their elementary years, Fujino – the star of her elementary school paper because of her four-panel mangas – develops a one-sided rivalry when Kyomoto secures her own comic slot.

The rivalry turns into friendship when they meet, and audiences follow them as their friendship blossoms while their manga journeys take flight.

AsiaOne posed the first question of the morning on how Look Back got him reflecting on why he makes movies.

He had shared in earlier interviews that he came across the manga during the Covid-19 pandemic and reading it prompted him to question why people create and make films.

Hirokazu, sat with a cup of black coffee, took a minute to process it.

“Hold on a second – asking ‘why I create’ right at the start... that’s usually the kind of question you save for the very end, isn’t it?” the 64-year-old remarked, prompting laughter in the room.

The answer for himself?

“I think there are many reasons,” he said, going on to explain how he explored this through Fujino.

“If you’ve read the manga, you’ll know that in the sequence leading up to her picking up the pen again, several different elements come into play. It shows that there are people who read her manga and laugh – that’s one part of it – but it goes beyond that,” he said.

Spoilers ahead.

At the end of the story after Kyomoto dies, Fujino starts drawing a new comic, and to Hirokazu, this was her trying to reconnect to her past self before meeting Kyomoto – when she was desperately trying to improve her comic drawing skills and pouring her heart into her work.

Essentially, to “remind herself where it all began”.

“I feel that this was something absolutely essential for her to continue creating comics moving forward. These are the kind of things I found myself reflecting on throughout the process of making this film,” he said.

‘Gazes from the departed’

The movie explores feelings of loss and grief, and it’s not a first for his films; his directorial debut Maborosi (1995) tells the story of a woman who tries to build a new life after she loses her husband to a sudden suicide.

Hirokazu was asked if filming Look Back changed how he understands loss and growing up.

“It’s a bit tricky to say. It’s not so much that I made it because something had changed. This is based on an original work, after all. I don’t really know if creating this brought about any particular change. I don’t go about making things while thinking solely about myself, so to be honest, I’m not really sure how that’s reflected in the work either,” he admitted.

“That said, I first explored the theme of grief back in my 20s, nearly 40 years ago now, so I imagine something must have shifted since then.”

He said his perspective on the matter has changed as he’s spent the past 40 years “getting closer to death”.

For instance, when he first started making films, both of his parents were still alive.

“Now, of course, both of them are gone. Many of the producers and actors I’ve worked with on my films have also passed away – about half of them, I’d say. Naturally, the work I create under these circumstances is bound to be different from what I made in my 20s,” he said.

But loss isn’t the only feeling that comes with their deaths.

He tied it back to Fujino, who continues creating while feeling Kyomoto’s presence.

“I imagine she’ll keep creating with Kyomoto’s gaze fixed on her back. In my own life, there are so many people who have passed away, people who are, in a sense, watching my back. The number of ‘gazes from the departed’ that I’m conscious of has grown significantly. And, in a way, that has become a motivation for me to keep on creating,” he said.

Veteran Japanese actress Kirin Kiki, a friend of his who starred in four of his films, died aged 75 in 2018.

In an interview with The Film Stage published two months after her death, he had briefly mentioned their friendship and said his sense of loss was “tremendous”.

‘That anxiety is gone now’

Koreeda reportedly started his career as an assistant director before he released Maborosi.

His breakout happened nine years after his debut with the 2004 film Nobody Knows, which is based on the 1988 Sugamo child abandonment case and starred a 12-year-old Yuya Yagira.

Since then, he has received numerous accolades, with his notable films including Still Walking (2008), Like Father, Like Son (2013), Our Little Sister (2015) and Shoplifters (2018).

Like Father, Like Son, about two families who are told their sons were switched at birth and must decide which child to keep, won the Jury Prize at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival.

Shoplifters, about a family that relies on shoplifting to cope with poverty, won the Palme d’Or at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival, and was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film representing Japan.

In 2022, he had his Korean-language film debut with Broker, which he described as a companion film to Shoplifters.

Featuring a prominent South Korean cast including Song Kang-ho, Gang Dong-won, Bae Doona and IU, it won the Ecumenical Jury Award at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, with Kang-ho becoming the first South Korean actor to win Best Actor in the festival’s history.

His next film, the psychological mystery thriller Monster (2023), earned widespread critical acclaim, featuring a music score composed by the late Ryuichi Sakamoto.

Hirokazu also won best director at the Asian Film Awards multiple times: in 2009 for Still Walking, in 2023 for Broker and in 2024 for Monster.

With decades of experience in making films, has Hirokazu’s relationship with the filmmaking process gotten easier over time?

“Of course, back when I first started, if each film didn’t turn a profit, I couldn’t get the next one – that’s the situation a director faces right after their debut, so it was constantly like walking a tightrope. Back then, being able to make one film every three years was actually considered quite good, so I suppose I was fortunate,” he recalled.

He said that the first 10 years of his career, up until Nobody Knows, he felt “constantly anxious” about whether he could continue being a director.

“That anxiety is gone now. Of course, that doesn’t mean I’m able to make everything I want to make, far from it. There are still plenty of projects that don’t get greenlit, even now,” he said.

Regarding a genre or subject he wants to explore but has yet to, Hirokazu said for the past 15 years, he has wanted to film a story set in Japan during World War II, but “due to various circumstances”, hasn’t come to fruition.

In an interview with Deadline published in December, he said he’s in the process of writing a script but can’t say if he knows where exactly it’s headed.

“I don’t know if this script is going to become my next film or when I can plan on shooting the film, but I do have a desire to work on another film abroad, in a language that’s not Japanese,” he said.

“And then perhaps after that, I’ll return to Japan and challenge myself by making a work that engages in history – specifically Japan’s experiences during the war – and try to understand that in a new way myself. These are the two things that I hope to be working on.” — AsiaOne