{"id":902777,"date":"2026-11-02T02:38:11","date_gmt":"2026-11-02T02:38:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/902777\/"},"modified":"2026-11-02T02:38:11","modified_gmt":"2026-11-02T02:38:11","slug":"between-us-director-on-connection-after-disaster-japanese-budgets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/902777\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Between Us’ Director on Connection After Disaster, Japanese Budgets"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tUnspoken emotional wounds linger throughout \u201cBetween Us<\/a>,\u201d Japanese director Matsumura Shingo\u2019s new film playing in the Tokyo International Film Festival<\/a>\u2019s Nippon Cinema Now section, its strand for Japanese films.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe film follows Makoto and Kasumi, childhood best friends who drift apart after an incident on a joint family camping trip and reunite six years later in their high school drama club. Kawashima Ririka, Kurasawa Anna, Kikuchi Akiko, Usuda Asami, Saito Yoichiro and Miura Takahiro star. The script leaves a lot unsaid, letting patient camerawork absorb the emotional information each character tries to withhold.<\/p>\n

\n\tMatsumura, whose credits include \u201cThe Lump in My Heart\u201d (2023), favors very still camera movement and deliberate observation. He has set himself a rule against using handheld camerawork in his films.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAll the cameras are becoming all compact right now, and you see all these videos shown on YouTube and social media that are shot by those cameras,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd so I wanted to differentiate what I show on the big screen with that kind of content. That is one of the reasons why. The second reason is that I want to capture the emotion of the actors truthfully, slowly.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThere\u2019s a fascinating contrast in how \u201cBetween Us\u201d seeks emotional realism but finds it through very measured, precise camerawork, particularly in how it turns the emotional distance between Makoto and Kasumi into literal distance through the blocking of each scene.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhat was more difficult to portray was [that] though they are apart, they are feeling the existence of the other,\u201d Matsumura says, \u201cand I wanted to show that with the use of the eyes and use of the space: though there was a physical space [between them], they kind of had each other in mind, and I wanted to express that through other elements.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe drama club has lost members because Kasumi takes it so seriously that others feel they can\u2019t keep up. Even after Makoto joins the club, the two are often shot far apart, but Matsumura shows the mending through a rather simple editing decision: cutting the girls\u2019 separate read-throughs as though they are trading lines, with each cut bringing them closer than ever before, even though they aren\u2019t in the same room.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe play is a fiction, but they are speaking in their own language,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd by saying their lines, they are able to say what they were not able to say in the real world, and by doing that, their distance becomes closer.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe script Kasumi discovers, which gives the film its title, becomes what begins to mend their relationship, quite literally bringing them closer together.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe intimate story has big-picture beginnings. Matsumura found inspiration in a run of disasters, starting with the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere was the pandemic. There is the war going on around the world, and [it] was a period in my life when I thought it is impossible for one to connect with others,\u201d he says. \u201cSo I just wanted to make a very simple film with two people, two human beings facing the other way, and to make them look at each other, and [ask] what kind of energy is born from that?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe story has nothing to do with those events in a literal sense, Matsumura says. What ties them to the past trauma linking Makoto and Kasumi\u2019s families is that both are \u201cunresolved.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI think that reflects the current situation where the earthquake, the nuclear power plant, the war, if it\u2019s on the media, we look into it. But once it\u2019s not on the news, we feel that it\u2019s kind of in the past solved, but it\u2019s really not in reality,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\n\tWith his two leads, \u201cthere was no specific direction that I gave them,\u201d Matsumura says. \u201cThis is a characteristic that they have as an actress \u2013 it\u2019s a common characteristic \u2013 but they have interest in others, and they listen to others closely, and they take in their words and make it their own, and they have this trait. It was very natural for them to actually perform these two characters, and I just let them freely perform what they felt like.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMatsumura\u2019s visually organized approach, paired with naturalistic performances, makes for a striking result, one that also shows the range of styles across this year\u2019s Nippon Cinema Now lineup.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere is really no [singular] mainstream in the Japanese cinema now,\u201d Matsumura says. \u201cBut one thing that is common is that the financing, the budget that we have for one film is very limited in Japan \u2013 it\u2019s not like in the U.S. And because of that, there is a limit to what we can portray, the concept that we can portray in one film.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThat isn\u2019t always a negative thing, he adds. \u201cWe are all trying to make a film about a subject that is within our reach, but we\u2019re not reaching for all the same things. We\u2019re reaching for all different things, and that is the current Japanese cinema environment. So we\u2019re not making a film about one big subject. Each of us are all making films about [a] variety of small subjects.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMatsumura says he is at a crossroads himself. \u201cI could follow my instinct and make an artistic film, and express what is inside of me, or I could make a film for the mass audience \u2013 I won\u2019t be facing with myself, but I\u2019ll be facing more towards society or the audience that watches the film,\u201d he says. \u201cI don\u2019t know which way I\u2019ll go, as of now.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Unspoken emotional wounds linger throughout \u201cBetween Us,\u201d Japanese director Matsumura Shingo\u2019s new film playing in the Tokyo International…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":902778,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[376656,88,206,88018],"class_list":["post-902777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-between-us","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-tokyo-international-film-festival"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/902777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=902777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/902777\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/902778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=902777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=902777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=902777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}