01/02/2025 - The debut feature from young Belgian-Japanese filmmaker Miwako van Weyenberg is a fluid and delicate coming-of-age story

Miwako van Weyenberg presents as a world premiere at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR), within the Big Screen competition, her debut feature, titled Soft Leaves [+see also:
trailer
interview: Miwako Van Weyenberg
film profile]. After getting noticed with her short film Summer Rain, selected in several festivals, the young Belgian-Japanese filmmaker has made a delicate portrait that captures the last childhood days of Yuna (Lill Berteloot), forced to make a decision heavy with consequences for her future.

It all begins in a soft climate of complicity between Yuna and Julien (Geert Van Rampelberg), as the daughter and her father prepare for their holiday, joyfully planning their itinerary, what to bring, and what destinations to prioritise. But this suspended moment is followed by a brutal rupture. Julien falls from a tree and into a coma that plunges Yuna into a deep sense of guilt and, most of all, highlights the fragility of her situation as she’s been living alone with her father since her mother has returned to Japan, her native country, and her brother Kai (Kaito Defoort) has gone to study in Germany. While Julien's prognosis is engaged, and no one knows what his future will be like once he wakes up, Kai returns to be at his sister’s side. But his presence can only be brief, and the two young people cautiously welcome the return of their mother Aika (Masako Tomita), who comes back to Belgium with their new little sister.

Soft Leaves highlights the emotional distance that a cultural gap and geographical remoteness can dig between a mother and her children. They have neither the same lives, nor the same habits or customs, which shows as much in small, everyday gestures as in their way of approaching life and intimate relationships. This chasm that separates them, and which will get smaller little by little, is skillfully illustrated by the script as it presents intimate moments preserved by the characters, whether it be those when Aika dances in her bedroom’s alcove, or when Yuna is drawing. The film shows us a young girl experiencing sensations, from the sound of the wind in the trees to the breath of her bird’s flapping wings – which the loose movements of her mother’s dancing body will soon echo. Although the film is faithful to its coming-of-age nature and thus mainly anchored to Yuna’s point of view, it nevertheless has a handful of very moving scenes centred on her brother Kai, notably when he finds the path to laughter again, a shy and sincere laugh he shares with his mother. Miwako van Weyenberg’s sensitive direction and the subtle performances of Lill Berteloot and Kaito Defoort, for whom this is a first role, as well as that of Masako Tomita, mostly seen in the theatre, to whom seasoned Belgian actor Geert Van Rampelberg responds in an echo, make this debut feature an object at once tender and solid, like the golden leaves that we apply to cracked objects in the Japanese art of Kintsugi, celebrating resilience.

Soft Leaves was produced by Prime Time (Belgium), in co-production with Stenola Production (Belgium). Berlin-based international sales outfit ArtHood Entertainment just bought the film’s rights. It will be released in Belgium on 26 March through Cinéart.

(Translated from French)