In a July 2024 report by The Guardian, Japan’s national police agency revealed that “almost 22,000 people in Japan died at home alone in the first three months of this year…about 80% of them aged 65 or older.” “By the end of the year, the agency estimates that cases of solitary deaths will reach 68,000, compared with about 27,000 in 2011,” the article added.
It’s an alarming phenomenon known as kodokushi, in which a person suffers a solitary death and whose body remains unattended for a certain period, endured by Japan’s increasingly aging population.
It’s a picture of sheer sorrow, often tagged as “lonely death,” that Filipino director Janus Victoria hopes to map and intimate in her debut feature Diamonds in the Sand, a multinational co-production that is set to have its world premiere in the Made in Japan section at this year’s Tokyo Filmex, Japan’s leading indie film festival, running from November 23 to December 1.
Through this Tokyo debut, Victoria — known for her short fiction titles such as the award-winning Hopia Express (2006) and Myth of Manila (2021) alongside a decade of documentary work in Philippine television — comes full circle to her very first foray into the project, which was presented in the 2013 Talents Tokyo, Berlinale’s talent development program centered on Asian filmmakers. The concept went on to win the Grand Prix at the time.
With developing producer Lorna Tee, who also served as a mentor in her time at Talents Tokyo, alongside fellow and independent producer Masumi Soga, Victoria took around five years to shape the material into its best form and six more years for it to finally reach actual production.
En route to its fruition, the project, once titled Kodokushi, participated in the Torino Film Lab, where it won the Audience Choice Award, Film Development Council of the Philippines (FDCP) Project Market, Tokyo Gap Financing Market, and Rotterdam’s Cinemart.
Past this, Victoria gathers sensational Japanese and Filipino talents in the movie, led by Lily Franky, of Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Shoplifters and Like Father Like Son; veteran Japanese actress Yoshiyuki Kazuko, mostly notable for her role in Nagisa Ōshima’s Empire of Passion; indie darling Maria Isabel Lopez (Kinatay and Ma’Rosa); and Gawad Urian winner Charlie Dizon.
In the story, Franky’s Yoji, a divorced businessman leading a solitary life in Tokyo, follows a Filipina caregiver to Manila, the Philippine capital suffused with tales of life and death, in hopes of beginning anew.
In the movie’s description on the Tokyo Filmex site, it credits “Lily Franky, whose acting is always brilliant in any film, once again displays an outstanding presence here, and veteran cinematographer Akiko Ashizawa’s images, which capture the atmosphere of both Japan and the Philippines, are also captivating.”
Ahead of the movie premiere, I spoke with Victoria about the decade-spanning process to completing Diamonds in the Sand, working with Ashizawa, and handling international co-productions. The conversation has been edited for clarity.
Diamonds in the Sand has been in the works since it won the Grand Prix in the 2013 Talents Tokyo. Can you talk about that process and why it took over a decade for the project to finally come into fruition?
To say that I had a hard time writing the screenplay would be an understatement. That’s what took the longest. Years. By nature I’m an information junkie and I got obsessed with the research I’d uncover and tried to put it all in. Every year, I would come up with at least two drafts and the film’s developing producer, Lorna Tee, who was also a mentor in my time at Talents Tokyo, would say, “It’s not there yet.”
She was a juror at my pitch and knew my intentions. She always reminded [me] of it. That was our lighthouse. It was a very frustrating process for both of us but from the start we shared the same level of trust and commitment and that’s what got us through.
It was also not easy to navigate a co-production setup for an independent film like ours with Japan. From the start, I was also working with a fellow from Talents Tokyo, indie producer Masumi Soga. We shook hands as green girls. We grew up together in trying to make this film. Again, I was very fortunate to collaborate with another producer who was also so committed despite all the setbacks.
After five years, we finally had a presentable script. When we shared the project with Dan Villegas of Project 8, he was really excited about it and he came onboard as committed and determined to see it through as we were. Even during the pandemic, we continued to apply for grants and pitch via Zoom to potential investors. We never stopped working and when things started opening up again, we had enough of an infrastructure to finally shoot.
You already directed a number of short fiction films, including the award-winning Myth of Manila (2021), but you also have a decade of experience producing documentaries for Philippine television. What made you decide to make your feature debut a narrative film?
Making a narrative feature — be it short or full-length — doesn’t feel like a choice to me that I have to make a big decision about. I love both features and documentaries. I’ve been making short features independently alongside my regular work in television documentaries. What making features enables me to do is express the emotions that I feel from covering current affairs situations.
The story is set in both Japan and the Philippines. Was the Japan location a requirement, considering that the film was backed by Talents Tokyo? Or was that more of an organic development?
It is not a requirement to have Japan as a location or a story element for Talents Tokyo. I purposely applied to the program because I wanted to explore the Japanese social issue of kodokushi, or the lonely death.
How does it feel to have acting sensations Lily Franky and Yoshiyuki Kazuko in your debut? How about Maria Isabel Lopez and Charlie Dizon?
The cast of the film is made of talented and intuitive actors. It was a privilege to work with them. Our lead, Lily Franky, is in nearly every scene. It was an amazing experience for me to watch him create an emotional journey for Yoji. I have seen what people say “giving life to a character” means through his performance.
One of the key themes of the film, based at least on the logline, is the exportation of Filipino labor through the character of Minerva, a Filipino caregiver. And there seems to be an uptick in international cinema as of late that uproots this particular experience, from Chie Hayakawa’s Plan 75, to Lorcan Finnegan’s Nocebo, to Ruben Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness, and plenty more. Can you speak more on that and how it expands the social commentary of the film?
I think it’s only natural that Filipinos come up in the stories made by other nationalities. We are all over the world and the labor we provide is becoming more and more indispensable in advanced societies. We are becoming a natural part of their daily lives and landscapes and so it makes sense that we also become part of their stories. In the same vein, our film has a Filipino caregiver because the lead character of Yoji is soon to be of retirement age with a mother in a nursing home.
What was it like lensing the film with veteran cinematographer Akiko Ashizawa?
One of my favorite films is Tokyo Sonata and I especially love the cinematography of that film, which was lensed by Akiko. It was a dream come true to work with her. She is a kindred spirit. To understand Manila, she even visited it on her own — outside the production — and we did random tours, just the two of us. It’s how we discovered the locations we ended up using. We picked a random LRT stop and when we got off, we felt the place speak to us both. Filmmaking in my experience entails a lot of difficulties — and I’m putting it mildly — but moments of discovery in collaborations like this one can fuel you for a long way.
The project is a three-way international co-production between the Philippines (Project 8), Japan (Spanic Films), and Malaysia (Paperheart). And I’ve learned that you’ve already worked with an international player in Laki sa Tubig (2023). Was this collaboration any different, now that it’s for a full-length film?
In both co-productions I’ve experienced — the short and the full-length — where it’s not just the co-producers and the financing structure that’s an international collaboration but the cast and crew are from two countries, what’s important is learning and understanding the work flows unique to each country and finding the middle ground.
What was the most rewarding and hardest aspect of the filming process?
What was most rewarding for me during the filming process was figuring out with fellow film artists how to make complex scenes work. Collaboration with the right people gave me a sense of fulfillment. The toughest part was dealing with people who turned out to be not committed to the project.
Can the Filipino audience expect a local screening of the film?
As of this writing, we do not have a definite plan yet but I will say yes nonetheless! – Rappler.com