Competition “Disregarded People” Press Conference
 
Hideo Sakaki (Director)
Hitomi Miwa (Actress)
 
“Disregarded People”, based on a sprawling manga about the relationships of a number of characters living in the island village of Goto, has a sort of lumpen Payton Place feel, asking some essential questions about love and the meaning of existence. The film begins with our main character, Yusuke Mamiana (Nao Omori), a rough man, tending toward nihilism questioning the meaning of life, both in the opening and closing scenes of the film.
 
Director Hideo Sakaki remarked on his strategy for bookending the film with the same lines. “The original thought was to put that in the final scene. The plan to put the narration in the beginning and the final of the film came upon me in the editing process. It was supposed to be originally just a narration, but decided in the end that voice needed a face. That question that is posed in the very beginning and at the end of the film is a question that does not have an answer, so I thought it appropriate to put it in twice.”

 
There are many subplots in the film, but the main story revolves around Yusuke and Kyoko (Hitomi Miwa), both feeling like outsiders in this small community. He, a dead-end drifter, coming back to his hometown, basically to end his life. She, her beauty marred by a large birthmark, feeling insufficient and unloved. They meet with violent and base sex and a relationship builds, ultimately resulting in marriage and the birth of a son. The many couplings, secret and not-so-secret relationships of their circle of townsfolk reflect on Yusuke and Kyoko’s relationship.

 
Sakaki remarked on what stories he focused on from the original source. “We had to center the film ultimately around the relationship between Yusuke and Kyoko. Of course at the same time we had to depict all these other people in different sexual relations so we did ultimately decide to leave in the plot with the president of the fishery company and the newlywed wife and Kyoko witnessing her mother having sex with her boyfriend. Those parts we decided to leave in.”
 
Being from Goto, he remarked about his personal relationship with the story. He said, “So, again, watching the film with an audience at the world premiere today, I suppose that this film is sort of an amalgam of the original works and of certain images and memories taken from my formative years. As you see, the stature of the Virgin Mary. You see the Buddhist graveyard… it’s just patches of myself blended with the original works.”
 
His lead actress, Hitomi Miwa reflected on her character adding, “I personally myself do not follow any particular religions. And when I read the script, it wasn’t really that descriptive about the religious aspects. I didn’t know that up until I joined this project that the Goto Islands had that kind of religious background. But in thinking about the character of Kyoko, I think in the end, ultimately, she was a woman who was constantly seeking love – and in that process she found herself living that kind of life, so she has to live with this sense of guilt, which triggers her to seek more love, and it’s that kinds of spiral that she’s caught in. In the end it leaves the audience with a question of: Do you think Kyoko has been able to find true love?
 
With such a personal story, Sakaki brought up his own dilemmas and how his collaborators helped with putting “Disregarded People” to the screen.
He said, “There was a lot of confusion within myself, because you don’t start shooting a movie knowing the answer and knowing where it’s going to go. It’s a continuous sort of introspection, self questioning of why am I doing this? What am I aiming to achieve? Why am I directing you, here, playing this character? It’s this endless spiral of questions that you have to deal with, so I suppose my crew and my actors were very considerate in that sense.”