The director of this film, Yang, is just another ethnic minority in Japan. She hopes younger generations won’t struggle with their own identity and can live as what they are in the way they want. In this short documentary, alongside her visual essay, she talks to random people in Nara from the street to the city hall, to explore what diversity is like today, but this time focusing on ‘foreigners and Nara’. She starts with a simple question such as, “the number of foreign residents living in Nara city” – Can you guess?
- Director：Yang Takae Kwihae
- Japan,Korea
- 2022
- 11min.
- color
- -
- Japanese, English
- -
Filmmaker and editor born in west Japan to a Korean family, Yang’s creative interest has been in immigration and “alternative ways of life”. She originally majored in Spanish studies and then learned documentary filmmaking in London. In her graduate doc, UTOPIA (2018), she stayed in Marinaleda village in Spain on her own, and communicated with and filmed the villagers. It was screened at five festivals both domestically and internationally. For the last couple of years, she’s been working on a new project, ‘My Awkward Relationship with the Nations’ with her friends. Her recent biggest curiosity goes to Puerto Rico and Kenya.
In Japan, which is trying to accept more foreign tourists, how much are foreigners living in Japan recognized? The author raises this question from his own experience, and asks about the distortions in society with humor.
