{"id":727026,"date":"2026-05-12T20:00:34","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T17:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/director-koji-fukada-doesnt-believe-in-bad-guys\/"},"modified":"2026-05-12T20:00:34","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T17:00:34","slug":"director-koji-fukada-doesnt-believe-in-bad-guys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/director-koji-fukada-doesnt-believe-in-bad-guys\/","title":{"rendered":"Director Koji Fukada Doesn\u2019t Believe in Bad Guys"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\tWhen Japanese director Koji Fukada received the Tokyo International Film Festival\u2019s Akira Kurosawa Award at the age of 42 in 2022, he bashfully suggested that the career achievement prize might be coming a little too soon. Past recipients had included Steven Spielberg, Yoji Yamada and Taiwan\u2019s Hou Hsiao-hsien; and the other honoree that night, with whom he shared a stage, was five-time Oscar winner Alejandro Gonz\u00e1lez I\u00f1\u00e1rritu. Fukada said he would be donating the cash prize that came with the honor to a local organization he had co-founded that provides mental health and legal support to freelance film workers in Japan \u2014 and he vowed to keep striving to make good on the faith placed in his talent. <\/p>\n

\n\tFukada had already consistently distinguished himself at major film festivals \u2014 his breakthrough family comedy Hospitalit\u00e9 won Tokyo\u2019s top prize in 2010, and his harrowing dramatic thriller Harmonium took home the jury prize from Cannes\u2019 Un Certain Regard section in 2016 \u2014 but for his latest feature, Nagi Notes<\/em>, Cannes has elevated him into its main competition for the first time, giving him a shot at the kind of glory befitting an Akira Kurosawa Award winner. He joins compatriots Hirokazu Kore-eda (Sheep in the Box<\/em>) and Ry\u00fbsuke Hamaguchi (All of a Sudden<\/em>) in the Palme d\u2019Or race \u2014 the first time in 25 years that three Japanese filmmakers have competed for Cannes\u2019 top prize in a single edition.<\/p>\n

\n\tNagi Notes<\/em> follows two middle-aged women \u2014 Yuri (played by Shizuka Ishibashi) and Yoriko (Takako Matsu) \u2014 who reunite in the rural Japanese town of the film\u2019s title over a few days in spring. Yuri is the ex-wife of Yoriko\u2019s brother, but the two women have remained close. Yoriko toils in anonymity in Nagi as a sculptor of human figures hewn from raw blocks of wood. Yuri is an architect at a large Tokyo firm, but she\u2019s come to visit Yoriko after finding herself at an impasse both professionally and personally. Fukada films rural Japanese life in Nagi with evident affection, and as the women reconnect and interact with a handful of other locals, memories and tensions build to the point of an unexpected\u202freckoning.<\/p>\n

\n\tAhead of Nagi Notes<\/em>\u2019 Cannes premiere \u2014 and Fukada\u2019s first walk up the Palais steps as a competition director \u2014 THR<\/em> connected with him in Tokyo to discuss the creative origins of his new feature, what 10 months in rural Nagi taught him about a town\u2019s hidden lives, and why he\u2019s grown convinced \u2014 like his hero Hayao Miyazaki \u2014 that \u201cbad guys\u201d don\u2019t belong in movies<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis is your second time adapting a work by playwright Oriza Hirata for the screen, following Sayonara<\/em> (2015). How did this follow-up collaboration come about?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tIn this case, he just got in touch with me. His play Tokyo Notes<\/em> takes place entirely within an art museum, and he told me that there\u2019s actually a really nice art museum in this town called Nagi, and he wondered whether I might be able to adapt his play, but set it in this museum in rural Japan instead of Tokyo. That sounded like an interesting idea, so I went to Nagi \u2014 about a six-hour ride from Tokyo by bullet train \u2014 and that\u2019s where it all started, in 2017. I visited the museum there, and it really was a wonderful building and an impressive arts institution \u2014 a great setting. But I also found Nagi to be a unique and fascinating town, and I started to think it would be a bit of a waste to tell this story without leaving the museum. So I moved away from the original play and started coming up with this idea for a story set in Nagi itself, which became Nagi Notes<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\n\tI understand you later did a longer artist-in-residency stay in Nagi. What were your impressions of the place, and how did they feed your story?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tI ended up spending about 10 months there, speaking with local residents and building my story more or less from scratch. First off, it\u2019s a very interesting place. The art museum has this very modern and unique design and it\u2019s just plopped there in the middle of this rural landscape, which makes for quite an unusual image. The museum has been there for nearly 30 years now, and it\u2019s had an effect on the population of Nagi. They\u2019re very proud of it, and the people there have become very culturally and artistically aware. Then, of course, as in the film, there is also a large military facility \u2014 a Japanese Self-Defense Forces base. This is a contrasting aspect of the town\u2019s character. It made me wonder why the base was there, of all places, and the relationship between Tokyo and this rural part of Japan.
The film presents two versions of the artist and the artist\u2019s life. We get the solitary sculptor who is devoted to her craft in a very pure sort of way. Yuri, by contrast, is a successful big-city architect. But she admits to feeling somewhat compromised, and she often complies when they ask her to simply imitate the style of better-known architects. Tell me about your interest in this dichotomy and how you arrived at it.<\/p>\n

\n\tFunnily enough, the idea of having an architect and a sculptor came to me quite early on. Initially, it was just instinct, but as I got to know Nagi, these two people and their pursuits turned out to be well-suited to the setting. I don\u2019t know how common wood sculpture is in other countries, but in Tokyo, it\u2019s a craft that\u2019s kind of impossible to pursue. Very few people have enough space in their small homes or apartments to do that kind of work, and there\u2019s the issue of noise and complaints from neighbors. High-quality wood is also very expensive. But in Nagi, space is abundant, and you can get beautiful wood cheaply or even for free just by foraging in the surrounding forests.<\/p>\n

\n\tArchitecture is kind of the opposite. It\u2019s an art form that can\u2019t be realized alone. No matter how much you love architecture, you can never really just do it by yourself, for the love of the craft. Filmmaking is much the same as architecture. I think I came to these two because I found myself empathizing with Yuri, while at the same time longing for the way Yoriko is able to work \u2014 how attractive it would be to live that very pure version of the solitary art life.<\/p>\n

\n\tKnowing your filmography, I had some app<\/a>rehension near the start of Nagi Notes<\/em>. Thinking back to films like Harmonium<\/em> or Love Life<\/em>, I worried that something truly terrible might be about to befall one of the sweet kids or lead characters. But it quickly becomes clear that this is a gentler, subtler, softer sort of film. Was that your intention from the outset?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tThis time, from the outset, I knew I didn\u2019t want to make something tragic. There are various reasons for that. One of them is that when people in Japan look at rural life from a city perspective, we tend to take quite a negative view \u2014 there\u2019s a tendency to see them as backward, insular, or even a little spooky. But I didn\u2019t want to go down that road. That was the first reason.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe second reason is that things like children going missing or terrible acts of violence are not the only tragedies that we encounter in life. For me, there is a bigger tragedy that exists for all of us, and that is the tragedy of loneliness, and it\u2019s something that we all suffer. In the film, Yuri has gotten divorced and she\u2019s found herself stuck in her work and her career \u2014 and now, she suddenly finds herself having to face up to this loneliness, and it\u2019s the biggest tragedy of her life so far. Yoriko, on the other hand, works totally alone, in a place full of empty land \u2014 and maybe because of that, she has accepted loneliness. I think that\u2019s what Yuri finds so attractive about Yoriko\u2019s way of life. I wanted to show this contrast.<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\t\u2018Nagi Notes\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tI was also struck by how there are really no bad people in the movie. What was it like working in that register?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tI didn\u2019t find that particularly challenging. I think that everything is relative when it comes to human beings. I don\u2019t think there are any good or bad characters. In certain situations, people can appear good or bad \u2014 and in this case, it\u2019s just that there were no moments in the film where anybody appeared bad. I quite often say that one of my favorite filmmakers is \u00c9ric Rohmer. In his films, there are no baddies, and yet the stories work so well. Hayao Miyazaki here in Japan is another hero of mine. He\u2019s shaped the way I see the world since I was a child. In the 1980s, he stopped having villains in his films. In every film after Castle in the Sky<\/em> [1986], there are no bad guys.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe film ends on a most ambiguous note, so I was curious whether you had a resolved answer as to what Yuri is going to reveal about who she really is in the moments or days after the film\u2019s end point.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tYuri\u2019s future is not decided. For me, the most important thing about a film is to give space, or to create blanks that the audience can fill in for themselves \u2014 not to force my ideas or a message onto the audience. I\u2019ve left space for the audience to wonder what happens to Yuri and to Yoriko. That\u2019s the best way I know to prevent a film from falling into propaganda. Yuri\u2019s future is a blank space, like all of ours. I do wish I could see how that sculpture turns out, though.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Japanese director Koji Fukada received the Tokyo International Film Festival\u2019s Akira Kurosawa Award at the age of 42 in 2022, he bashfully suggested that the career achievement prize might be coming a little too soon. Past recipients had included Steven Spielberg, Yoji Yamada and Taiwan\u2019s Hou Hsiao-hsien; and the other honoree that night, with…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":727027,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Koji-FUKADA-2026-Nagi-Notes-Partners-Star-Sands_Hassaku-Labs_Wonderstruck-_-Survivance-_-Momo-Film-Co.-copy.jpg?crop=0px%2C60px%2C1764px%2C987px&resize=1440%2C810","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[160788,32193,124783,162128],"class_list":["post-727026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-social-mediaa","tag-cannes-2026","tag-cannes-film-festival","tag-international","tag-koji-fukada"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/727026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=727026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/727026\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/727027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=727026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=727026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=727026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}