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Satoko Yokohama is a Japanese film director and writer of “The Actor” (2015) and “Ito” (2021), among others. Her 5th feature, “Seaside Serendipity”, was awarded the Special Mention of the Generation Kplus International Jury at the 75th Berlinale. Daisuke Wada is a film producer from Japan who worked on such movies as “The Women in the Lakes” (2024) by Tatsushi Omori, and “Remain in Twilight” (2021) by Daigo Matsui.

On the occasion of the world premiere of “Seaside Serendipity” at the Berlin International Film Festival, they talk about the process of adapting manga into a movie, the importance of cinematic experience and other topics.

This is your fifth feature film. In each one, you have combined dramatic and comedic elements. How would you describe your style and approach to the creative process?

Satoko Yokohama: The basis of my philosophy is the love for comedy. My goal is to make people laugh and provide them with a joyful experience.

The rainy, cold and grey atmosphere of the Berlin International Film Festival seems perfect for the premiere of such a positive film as “Seaside Serendipity”. This adaptation of a manga by Gin Miyoshi titled “The Road to the Seaside”, written and directed by Satoko Yokohama, was selected for the Generation Kplus section, where it serves as a warming break from the winter. Moreover, Yokohama’s coming-of-age movie was selected for the 6th Setouchi Triennale, which is one of the largest art festivals in Japan.

Seaside Serendipity is sceening at Berlin International Film Festival

Taking place in a seaside town during summer vacation, the story follows teenager Sosuke (Konosuke Harada) as he fills his time with various activities, like hanging out with friends, sculpting a mermaid or helping with interviews for the school newspaper. Additionally, the town in which he lives is a haven for peculiar newcomers, which makes it impossible to experience boredom there.

Shô Miyake’s All the Long Nights is a film about small things: decency, kindness, why people help each other out, how those acts can inspire others. The first character we meet is Misa (Mone Kamishiraishi), a sensitive type who suffers from premenstrual syndrome. In the opening scene, this causes Misa to lose her cool at work, and while the situation is smoothed over, she quits out of shame. Leaving the city, she lands a gig in a suburban company, assembling astronomical sets, and meets Takatoshi (Hokuto Matsumura), a young, panic attack-prone man who recently left a job under similar circumstances. After an initial misunderstanding, their orbits align into something that looks like love but never skews romantic.

If that all sounds a bit saccharine, bear with it: in Miyake’s previous film, Small, Slow But Steady, the director took the autobiography of Keiko Ogasawara, a hearing-impaired female boxer, and...

Nobody is broken in Shô Miyake’s films; nobody is quite beyond repair. But over the course of his last few features, the Japanese director has centered characters who are at at least mildly sprained, and trying hard to get by on hope and a homemade splint. In his previous movie, “Small Slow But Steady” — a title that incidentally could be a manifesto for Miyake’s soft, low-key style — a deaf female amateur boxer battled self-doubt and the looming closure of her beloved gym. And his new film, “All the Long Nights” offers a similar kind of balm, this time focusing on a young woman whose major challenge comes from debilitating Pms. It’s an affliction rarely described with this much compassion, when it is mentioned at all outside its regular context as the lazy punchline to a thousand sexist jokes.

Here it is treated with a sensitivity that does...

Twenty-five years after the international premiere of his graduation work “Banquet of The Beasts” in the Panorama section, and twenty-two after “Hole in the Sky”, Kazuyoshi Kumakiri is back in Berlin with the thriller “#Manhole” which celebrates its international premiere in the Berlinale Special program. In this one-man suspense drama, a relatively simple story of an unfortunate incident evolves into a film rich with unexpected twists.

“#Manhole” is screening at San Diego Asian Film Festival Spring Showcase

On the evening before his wedding day, Shunsuke (Yuto Nakajima) walks into into his own stag party he was unaware of. The mood is excellent: as congratulations pour in, so do drinks. A bit wobbly after a drink too many in a pub in Shibuya district, Shunsuke falls inside a manhole, and wakes up injured and unable to climb back to the street. To make things worse, his cellphone Gps stops working and...

It was either Nietzsche or Tex Avery — but one of our great philosophers — who asserted that there are two types of people in this world: those who walk through life blithely unbothered by manholes, and those who are destined to fall into them. Now, for curious members of the former class, comes an intimate examination of what it’s like to be one of the latter: “#Manhole,” Japanese director Kazuyoshi Kumakiri’s slick, increasingly deranged survival thriller about a man who will finally learn to know his true nature from a hole in the ground.

Popular, successful and possessed of highly covetable good looks, Shunsuke Kawamura has the world at his feet. It’s the eve of his wedding to the pregnant daughter of his company’s CEO, and his co-workers have organized a surprise party to toast his good fortune. Walking home drunk from the festivities, Shunsuke suddenly stumbles.

Twenty-five years after the international premiere of his graduation work “Banquet of The Beasts” in the Panorama section, and twenty-two after “Hole in the Sky”, Kazuyoshi Kumakiri is back in Berlin with the thriller “#Manhole” which celebrates its international premiere in the Berlinale Special program. In this one-man suspense drama, a relatively simple story of an unfortunate incident evolves into a film rich with unexpected twists.

#Manhole is screening at Berlinale

On the evening before his wedding day, Shunsuke (Yuto Nakajima) walks into into his own stag party he was unaware of. The mood is excellent: as congratulations pour in, so do drinks. A bit wobbly after a drink too many in a pub in Shibuya district, Shunsuke falls inside a manhole, and wakes up injured and unable to climb back to the street. To make things worse, his cellphone Gps stops working and a heavy rain starts falling making his situation more insufferable.