Japanese Director Takeshi Kogahara on Working With Darkness and Silence in Debut Characteristic ‘Nagisa’

“Once you begin trying within the darkness, you’ll see one thing. That’s the thought I wished to depict and convey,” Takeshi Kogahara tells Selection, after the screening of his debut “Nagisa,” a film the place darkness and silences play a vital position.

The plot follows a younger man (performed by Yuzu Aoki) who suffers from guilt associated to the demise of his adored sister (Nanami Yamazaki), and encounters her ghost in a haunted tunnel. Thus, he retains on visiting the tunnel to re-experience his previous.

“The core concept got here up after I was learning on the movie faculty, a very long time in the past – 20 years in the past or so. The concept was to [have a character] go right into a tunnel and there see another person, a ghost of somebody particular, [someone] you belong to.”

Whereas persevering with his profession path, this concept remained caught in Kogahara’s thoughts, till he managed to write down a primary draft of “Nagisa” eight years in the past. When requested how he labored on rendering the characters’ conflicts and personalities via a film dominated by darkness and with little dialogue, he mentioned: “Within the [original] script, there have been extra traces, extra dialogues. However I let the actors improvise. […] As soon as I used to be within the modifying room, I picked no matter suited the story higher, and that’s the way it turned out this fashion. So I didn’t imply to chop down many of the traces and spotlight the silence, however I simply felt it labored for me and for the story.”

Whereas silence was the results of his inventive course of, the presence of darkness was clearly deliberate beforehand: “I didn’t wish to make every part too ‘clear,’ apparent and simple to grasp. And nonetheless, I felt I needed to maintain some hints, some sounds, some figures, even within the darkness.”

The one cinematic reference Kogahara mentions is Lee Chang-dong’s “Peppermint Sweet.” “I watched this movie a very long time in the past. Then I simply re-watched it a pair extra occasions and it helped me to again up my script.”

The director’s work with Yuzu Aoki was intense.

“I shared Lee Chang-dong’s movie, defined each single scene, even web page by web page. We additionally did some rehearsal and spent a while collectively earlier than taking pictures.”

Kogahara additionally invited him to improvise to construct his character with out essentially specializing in the scenes current within the script.

Yuzu Aoki has turn into well-known in Japan as he’s one of many primary solid members of a Japanese TV drama “Extra Than Phrases,” and starred in Hollywood film “Minamata.”

“Nagisa” was filmed in and round Nagasaki for 2 weeks in late summer season 2020. Kogahara himself took care of the modifying course of, which took virtually a 12 months.