“Fujiko,” the Kimura Taichi drama that Japanese actor-producer Megumi spent 4 years producing and starring in, departed the twenty eighth Far East Movie Competition in Udine with two prizes: the Golden Mulberry Viewers Award and a shared Black Dragon press jury quotation alongside Korean documentary “The Seoul Guardians.” It was a double recognition that validated a profession pivot Megumi started out of necessity in the course of the pandemic and has since was a private mission.
“I wanted to empower Japanese women through film,” Megumi tells Selection, citing a information report she encountered rating Japan final globally in feminine vanity. That statistic grew to become the animating impulse behind “Fujiko,” which follows a single mom navigating private freedom amid the social upheaval of Seventies and ’80s Shizuoka, and attracts on Taichi’s circle of relatives historical past. The movie assembled an ensemble anchored by Yuki Katayama alongside Lily Franky, You, Issey Ogata, Kayoko Kishimoto and Tsuyoshi Ujiki, with SC Movies Intl. dealing with worldwide gross sales. It opened Nippon Connection in Germany earlier than heading to Udine.
The pivot represents a big evolution for an actor with greater than twenty years of display work behind her. She claimed the Blue Ribbon Award for finest supporting actress in 2020 for her performances in “The Stormy Family” and “One Night,” and her credit span crime drama “The Blood of Wolves,” Netflix’s “The Naked Director” Season 2 and the interval sequence “Ōoku: The Inner Chambers.” On the unscripted aspect, her Netflix sequence “Badly in Love” broke information on the platform and led to a multi-year deal to develop new content material.
The pandemic, nevertheless, reshaped her relationship to the business. Having spent years depending on gives from others, she determined the time had come to generate her personal materials. A subsequent journey to Cannes, the place she witnessed the urge for food for Japanese cinema constructing internationally, confirmed that path.
With Japan named Nation of Honor at this 12 months’s Cannes Film Market, she reads the designation as recognition of one thing sturdy within the nation’s inventive tradition. “The unique discipline of Japanese people, like a mille-feuille, where you layer practice and training — that accumulation conveys a quiet heat to others,” she says. “I feel like that kind of thing is being re-evaluated now.” Japan has three movies in rivalry for the Palme d’Or this 12 months.
Megumi describes herself as a uncommon determine inside Japan’s movie business — an actor who additionally produces. She says no person in Japan occupies fairly the identical place, and she or he intends to leverage that twin identification internationally as Japan’s international profile rises.
Sustaining “Fujiko” throughout its four-year improvement was its personal take a look at. “Over those four years, waving the flag for everyone saying, ‘This way, let’s make it interesting,’ and keeping that heat up – I think that was more important and difficult than anything,” she says.
On the appearing aspect, her schedule is packed. “Nameless,” directed by Jojo Hideo, opens in Japan in Might. She can also be connected to “This Is I,” a drama sequence for Netflix, and is because of start taking pictures an untitled Japan-U.Ok. co-production — a performing position solely — subsequent month.
As a producer, she is growing two untitled initiatives: one constructed round a particular middle-aged man and his relationship together with his daughter, and a second drawn from probably the most painful expertise of her personal life, however is retaining particulars below wraps.
She factors to administrators Nagahisa Makoto and Kimura Taichi — each with roots in promoting — as exemplars of a technology reshaping Japan’s worldwide standing. “Works in that genre — with a unique tempo, a hint of music and being iconic — are uniquely Japanese,” she says. “I think they have the power to be accepted.”
As a performer, her guiding touchstone is the late Kirin Kiki (“Shoplifters”). “I want to properly express the nuances of ordinary people,” she says.
