Unveiled in the 49th Toronto Film Festival’s Platform competition and set to take a second bow in the 72nd San Sebastian International Film Festival’s New Directors line-up, Winter in Sokcho [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Koya Kamura
scheda film] is French-Japanese director Koya Kamura’s debut feature film.

Cineuropa: What made you want to adapt Élisa Shua Dusapin’s novel?
Koya Kamura: I was struggling to write what was supposed to be my first film, which was set in Japan and revolved around “the vanished”, people who voluntarily disappeared. My producer spoke to me about Winter in Sokcho, which I read. I was immediately captivated by the writing, by the trajectory of the main character, and by the subject-matter which was really close to my heart, because it’s about a young woman who never knew her father, because he’d left before she was born. I was also fascinated by the book’s set-up, which was very similar to the one in my first short film, Homesick (which takes place in Fukushima), which unfolded in a context of suspended time and in a place that’s somewhat emptied of its population. There was one thing that was really clear and which was confirmed when I spoke to the author, who’s half-French and half-Korean, whereas I’m half-French and half-Japanese. Our pasts, our experiences and the way we’ve experienced our mixed race - our “difference” - were very similar, and led us to ask the same questions about our identity. So, I very quickly dug deep into the story and made it my own, because Elisa didn’t want to be involved in adapting it.

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How would you describe Soo-Ha’s character, who’s desperately searching for her own identity but in a very unobvious way?
At the beginning of the film, she doesn’t even know she’s trying to find out who she is. Looking from the outside in, she’s at a standstill, and she doesn’t have the strength, the desire or the awareness to change it. The arrival of the French character triggers something in her that raises questions and a sudden awareness of her immobility, of her self-effacement, and of how she got to this point. But it’s not spectacular; this is an intimate film, with what I hope are subtle moves, but which others might call tenuous.

What about Yan’s character, who represents another form of loneliness and is a very paradoxical artist?
He’s first and foremost very selfish, because he’s a man who has always put his art first, which has left him isolated. I wanted the viewer to understand things quickly, because I don’t give much information about him, his past, what he is. He’s someone who’s not very curious: he doesn’t eat local food, the places he visits are touristy places and he makes no effort to talk to people. But he’s interested in someone other than himself for the very first time and he opens up a little bit, honestly and sincerely, to Soo-Ha.

What about the animation sequences?
In the novel, the viewpoint often comes from the character of Soo-Ha: we discover the world through her eyes, we hear her thoughts, we understand her vision of what’s around her. I was determined to avoid voice-overs, because I wanted something totally internal but also organic. Animation allowed me to have something rawer. Initially, I thought about colour spots, lines drawing themselves, stretching and curving; in fact, that’s how the first animation sequences in the film came about, which are totally abstract. The aim was to get a glimpse of the character’s inner side, to understand what she feels in terms of emotions. But I didn’t want the meaning to be too clear: it needed to be a little bit difficult to comprehend.

Can you tell us something about your two main actors?
Roschdy Zem’s strength is his ability to appeal to very different audiences. He has an incredibly wide fanbase who aren’t necessarily cinephiles, but he also makes very specific film choices. So, I’m incredibly proud to feature in this spectrum. This is Bella Kim’s first ever film. Ideally, I wanted a young woman who was half-French and half-Korean, and who spoke perfect Korean and very good French, because if an accent is too strong, it distracts the audience from the film a little. From the very first time I met her, I realised that she’d totally understood the character.