Tokyo (AFP)

A young prodigy of Japanese cinema invited to festivals around the world, director Koji Fukada, very invested in supporting Japanese auteur films and improving working conditions in this industry, is however pessimistic about his future.

The filmography of the 40-year-old filmmaker, who already has around ten feature films, will be highlighted this year at the Tokyo International Film Festival (from October 31 to November 9), where he was awarded in 2010.

Koji Fukada, honored in Cannes for "Harmonium" (2016), is strongly influenced by the 19th century French writer Honoré de Balzac or director Eric Rohmer, and some of his films are shown abroad under French titles ( "Hospitality", "Goodbye summer").

"As a teenager, I started watching European films, including those by Rohmer. My first shock was 'The Green Ray'" (1986), he told AFP.

"The way of filming the characters and their emotions was terribly modern, it made me want to make films like that".

In 2019, he was named Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres in recognition of his link with France, where he "would like to shoot a film if the opportunity arises", like his compatriots Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Hirokazu Kore-eda before him.

- The absurd and the loneliness -

Beyond these inspirations, which make his work familiar to Western audiences, his films subtly unveil the secrets and lies of seemingly untold families, and tackle themes such as xenophobia, remorse or revenge.

He is a director "who loves the human" and "takes a penetrating look at society and its absurdity", according to Tokyo festival programming director Kohei Ando.

"In times of coronavirus, we thought that the public had to watch their films again."

"I try to deal with universal subjects like loneliness", explains the director.

"It's in all of us and we try to live with it, putting a lid on it. But there always comes a point where it comes out and forces us to question the meaning of life."

These questions have notably resurfaced in force with the pandemic, which has pushed the Japanese to stay at home.

"The number of suicides is increasing in Japan" because "our daily life, the things that we cherished, the loved ones, were suddenly stolen from us", observes the director.

The coronavirus has also struck a blow to art house cinemas, already in poor economic shape, causing many closures.

Koji Fukada launched a crowdfunding campaign, succeeding in raising the equivalent of more than 2.5 million euros to help these essential vectors for the dissemination of independent cinema.

- Hits, insults and harassment -

"It is difficult to shoot non-commercial films in Japan, where we attach too much importance to profitability", he regrets.

Part of the problem lies, according to him, in the absence of an equivalent to the CNC, the public body making it possible to subsidize films in France.

To reduce the economic risk, the big studios only finance safe films, "often with the same actors and scripts adapted from famous works", usually manga.

Mr. Fukuda specifies that he has "nothing against" this literary form of Japanese popular culture, while his latest film ("The Real Thing") is itself adapted from a manga.

"But that harms diversity," he said.

"At this rate, Japanese cinema is going to ruin," he says.

The director is also alarmed by the working conditions of Japanese cinema.

In particular, last year, he called for the elimination of harassment, both moral and physical, which frequently rages on film sets.

"There are directors who think that making a film is a struggle", which amounts to condoning the abuse of power, critic Koji Fukada, confiding that he himself suffered blows and insults when he started out in the profession.

If the #MeToo movement has raised awareness about sexual harassment in Hollywood or in France, there is still in Japan "a climate hostile to people who denounce" these actions, according to the filmmaker.

"There are still a lot of obstacles" to be overcome in order to change mentalities.

© 2020 AFP