Women In Motion by Kering | Tokyo Internal Film Festival 2025

Women In Motion by Kering | Tokyo Internal Film Festival 2025

Women In Motion is a program launched in 2015 by Kering,
an official partner of the Cannes Film Festival. This year marks its 10th anniversary. Before we begin the Talk, we would like to invite director
Hirokazu Kore-eda to give an opening speech. I was invited to a Kering-hosted party at the
Cannes Film Festival, and it was there that I first learned what that event meant and what kind of partnership they were building with the Festival. I was quite shocked and moved, and I thought how wonderful it would be if we could have
that kind of initiative in Japan as well, and then from 2019 a movement like
this one began. Working in this way, in collaboration with people from
outside the film industry, to look closely at what issues there are and
what needs to be improved is something I have come to realize is very important. That’s why I support this and am here today. Through events like this, I hope I can also keep changing my own awareness. Takahata-san has been active across a wide range of fields, from drama and musicals to film, and this year she starred in major hits such as Kokuho and
5 Centimeters per Second, making her one of the most prominent actors today. You also got married last year, and I imagine this is a very
fulfilling time for you both professionally and personally. Could you share your thoughts on the theme of
women in the film industry, which Women In Motion aims to highlight? To be honest, I personally haven’t felt that it was
particularly hard to work on set just because I’m a woman. But I know that as I go through things like
pregnancy and raising a child, more challenges will surely arise, since only women can give birth, for example. So I think there will be many issues I’ll have to
face and figure out, especially in the workplace. That’s why I’m truly happy to be invited to this event at just the right moment in my life. Next is Mr. Kento Nakajima. Nakajima-san is not only an artist, but has
also expanded into acting and is eager to appear in overseas productions as well. In fact, at last year’s Women In Motion, one of the themes we addressed was allyship, in which
people in the majority actively support and advocate for the rights of minorities. From the perspective that issues surrounding women can
only be solved with men’s understanding and cooperation, we wanted again this year to hear about things
from a male point of view, and that is why we invited Nakajima-san to join us on stage. In creating an environment in film together with women,
I have always, as a man, seen co-existence and co-prosperity as
the most important point. So through Women In Motion, I hope I can properly talk
about how women can further, how should I put it, bring out their power and devote themselves to filmmaking within that environment from
the perspective of my own generation. I feel that actors of my generation, myself included, are right in the middle of a time of major change, so I’m really happy to be given a platform like this. Fukuma-san has developed and produced films and TV series
such as Broker, The Truth and Asura at Bunbuku, led by director Hirokazu Kore-eda. As someone who knows film production firsthand,
we’d love to hear your thoughts. But first, may I ask you to say a few words? This year I went to the Cannes Film Festival with a film
called A Pale View of Hills. There was also a Women In Motion 10th anniversary event there, which I had the chance to attend, and
what left the strongest impression on me was the speech by Nicole Kidman, who received the Award. She made a promise to make at least one film with a
female director every 18 months, and over the past 8 years she has actually realized
as many as 27 such collaborations. I was truly encouraged and given hope by
both that action and that message. For my part, in recent years I have often been involved in
international co-productions, and every time I see how film is made overseas,
I naturally find myself thinking more than before about how things are in Japan by comparison; what the working conditions are like and how
women are able to work here. And I have had more chances to discuss these
issues with my colleagues. So today, I really look forward to sharing my
experiences, however small, and engaging in meaningful discussion with you all. And as our special guest today, we are joined by a
member of the Casting Society and also a governor for the Casting Directors branch of the
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which organizes the Academy Awards,
Ms. Debra Zane. As a casting director, Ms. Zane has worked for more than 30 years at the forefront of Hollywood. I’m delighted to be here. I’m honored to be here and to join you. And this is my first visit to Japan,
so it’s extra special. And I look forward to a conversation about
women’s involvement in movie making. Now, for our first theme, I would like to ask you
about the importance of casting in film and television works. Just before this Talk, we screened the documentary
Casting By, which highlights legendary female casting director Marion Dougherty. I haven’t felt that as much in film and TV sets,
but I originally come from musical theatre, and in musicals the starting point is that you have to get people to come and see the show. So I have long felt that there are moments when, before casting the person who best fits the role, priority is given to casting someone who will draw an audience. Watching that documentary reminded me of that issue, and it made me feel a renewed sense of responsibility. I felt that casting is truly an art form, one that shapes the story and emotion of a film. It’s what completes the work as a whole. Casting directors may not have received
enough recognition until now, but I now see how essential their role really is. It really reminded me of the passion of pioneers and of how important
it is to have people with an eye for talent discovery. In Japan, it depends on the director or whether it’s film or TV, but for the main cast, decisions are usually made
between the director and producer. The director shares their vision, and we come up with
a list of candidates together. Once we settle on our first choice, the producer contacts
the actor’s agency, presents the proposal and script, and makes a pitch. Then, when it comes to supporting roles, we bring in a casting director, decide together through discussion, and ask them to organize auditions,
including for child actors. I believe casting is first and foremost about the overall ensemble, so I am always helped by the way casting directors act as true partners and offer us so many ideas and suggestions. This is essential for casting directors to have a very broad encyclopedic knowledge of really all actors. Each project is different, in that some projects when they are green lit,
let’s talk about, they’re financed, when a project is financed, sometimes they’re financed because
an actor has committed themselves to the project. And so based on that, it’s a go. Sometimes it can be the power of the script if it’s based on, like for example, a probably Shōgun, something based on a book that can be the go for that, or sometimes it’s the director. But whatever the case may be, the casting director is
brought on very early in the process, perhaps the earliest, one of the key department heads
who’s hired very early on, and they get to work immediately trying to make all the most appropriate, creative, exciting suggestions for each role. And so I know it’s different in every country the way it’s done, but it’s always the director who makes the final decision, but with the collaborative input of the casting director. For actors, casting is of course a crucial part of the
production process. How do you choose your roles, and how do you prepare for auditions or meetings with directors? Takahata-san, how do you go about choosing roles and
meeting with directors? There were times when I went to an audition and didn’t get the part, and I felt as if my whole self had been rejected and got really down. But at some point my way of thinking changed a little. By showing who I am, they can see whether I fit that role or not, and if I don’t fit, there’s nothing I can do about it.
It just wasn’t meant to be. If I do fit, then I give everything to that role. That was true of the 2 projects I took part in this year as well. Even if I myself am not sure whether a role suits me, if the director, the person who has called me in, says,
“I want you for this part,” if someone who has really watched me says that, maybe it’s something I should take on. By taking on that challenge, you discover a new side of
yourself and shortcomings. The thing to remember is that the work we do is project specific, so I’m always thinking of the characters. And so let’s say you auditioned on tape and I watched it and I might think it was very good, but if you seemed too young or too old,
if there’s something that’s just not that character, then it’s not going to work on that project. It doesn’t mean that you didn’t do a good job. It doesn’t mean that the casting director doesn’t like you. It just means we have to get the part exactly right. And that’s, I think, what people need to remember. Debra-san, have there ever been cases where
a director disagreed with your choice, but you strongly recommended someone and
they ended up getting the role? Yes. I mean, my experience… so many times that I can’t count is my memory of creatively really fighting for someone
and convincing the director but very much against their instinct and whatnot.
But then they hire the actor that I promoted strongly for the part, and then they go off and make the movie, and 1 year or 1.5 years later, whenever the premier is, I see them together and they are hugging, they’re madly in love, and that’s okay. But there’s no memory of them ever not
wanting to cast that actor. And that is called the story of my life. The Oscars are finally creating an award for Casting. Despite casting being such an essential part of film and TV,
why has this category not existed until now? Do you think gender barriers played a role? I think that for so long in the beginning of Hollywood
in the beginning of the studio system, it tended to fall to the secretaries of the studio bosses to keep a list of
all of the actors who were contractually signed to that studio. Those people became known as the people who knew where
all the actors were, who was available, had ideas. And so it started out as a very sort of female forward profession. And there are a lot of women, I would say probably
predominantly women in casting, but I think that it was, and so I do think that for that reason, you know,
I don’t know how much that was the case that they never felt like that was a craft that was
worthy of award recognition. I was a part of this group of casting directors with the,
on the board of governors who… we went and contacted prominent directors and actors and
producers and former board of governors to speak out on a video about why they thought we should deserve it. And I think that was so unbelievably helpful to the cause because when you saw directors speaking about it and actors speaking, and I mean, like Academy Award winning actors,
Academy award winning directors who spoke about how it was long overdue and questioned why not. And so this is the inaugural year for the award, and it’s very exciting. Film and television reflect the values of their time
and sometimes even drive change. Debra-san, over the course of your 30-year career, how do you think the way women are portrayed in films has evolved? You see women in leadership roles now. You see, they have, I mean Angela Bassett was the
President of the United States, and things that we have a hard time doing in real life,
it’s showing more and more in characters, female superheroes and things like that. I guess parity is on its way. I don’t know if we’re fully there yet, but I definitely think there’s been many improvements, not even just with gender but with sexuality and everything, I think is more reflective of the world in which we live. I have one question. In recent years, including
with regard to LGBTQ roles, there has been a view that a role should be played by
someone who shares the same background, that the person concerned should play it. And another view that acting is precisely about
playing someone different from yourself. There are many opinions, but when you cast, do you aim for realism? It’s a good question. It’s a tricky question, because at the end of the day, it’s acting, right? But in a world in which there are so many LGBTQ actors
who are strong actors, I always feel like the best actor needs to play the part, regardless of what their actual life is. But it did get a little tricky with people feeling like
you must be something to portray something, and it sort of blurred the lines between artifice. And it’s not documentary it’s a feature film. So I know but it’s been harder to take a role that is not
something that someone genuinely is. I don’t know if there’s the right answer, but I think that my instinct is that
the best actor should play the part. How about you, Nakajima-san? Do you feel the portrayals of women in films have changed? When I think of recent works, Promising Young Woman, for example, portrays the female lead
not as a victim but as a fully-fledged protagonist. And in Barbie, feminism is conveyed through both humor and deep emotion. Watching that, I feel that in this era the “volume” of
the strength with which women live and survive within films has become
even more prominent. Fukuma-san, I believe you are rather in a position
to help create and shape new portrayals of women to generate change. As times have changed, the way women are portrayed
has also changed. To begin with, of course even in the past,
if you think of directors like Mikio Naruse or Yūzō Kawashima there were many works with very compelling heroines, films that
depicted women with great delicacy. At the same time, however, we cannot deny that women
tended to be divided into 3 or 4 “types” and portrayed in variations on those types. In contrast,
in the past several years, as everyone has said, I feel that contemporary women are increasingly being portrayed as acting with their own will, taking the initiative themselves, and I am very conscious of that in the production process. Our film A Pale View of Hills, which was released this year, is precisely a story that delicately depicts the lives of women. The original novel was written in the early 1980s,
in 1982, and it leaves a great deal of ambiguity for interpretation. It features several female characters, but as the story unfolds, they gradually begin to feel like
facets of a single woman. That is, we had a vision to portray the many sides of
one woman through those characters and shared it with international producers as
the director’s vision. At the start of the project, the director, original author, and the first producer
all of them were men, except me. So when telling a story like this, I felt that having a woman involved at the
creative core from an early stage would bring greater authenticity. Bringing a female perspective into the story and
the shaping of characters would surely have a positive impact, I thought. In the end, the production team expanded to include
partners from the UK and Poland. We ended up with 6 producers in total 3 women and 3 men, completely balanced.
And I believe that balance really helped us create the story and characters in a well-rounded, thoughtful way
through to the very end. The issues surrounding women in the film industry are gradually improving, thankfully. What else do you think we can do to help women thrive even more? Listening to this conversation I was thinking that, As I go through a turning point in life as a woman,
precisely because I am one of the people concerned, there will probably be many times, even over very small things, when I feel “it would be easier to work if this were
handled a little differently,” or “I wish this part were cared for a bit more.” Rather than thinking I just have to put up with those things, I would like to speak up and say “How about trying this?” so that
women who will give birth and raise children in the future can work more easily and in doing so, become one small part of
building such a working environment. I feel that we are gradually moving into a time
when people are better protected. The various boundaries between men and women are
truly becoming more borderless, and our sets are now being built that way. Small changes like that could lead to big progress in the film industry, and I think people are finally beginning to notice. As someone who works in film and lives in the middle of this shift, I hope to help move things forward. I learned so much. I didn’t know really that I would learn so much about
how differently we all do, differently and yet similarly we all do our jobs. And I just hope it’s been enlightening for everyone, and it was great to meet everyone as well. Usually, as a producer, I see myself as a
behind-the-scenes person, and I always try to stay on the side that supports the actors,
the directors and the crew. But having the chance to speak here today, I would be
very happy if this could also be an opportunity for everyone who loves and
supports film, in whatever role, to feel it’s okay for them to speak out like this in their
own words and with their own voice. Thank you very much for today.

Kering features the fifth Women In Motion Talk at the 38th Tokyo International Film Festival, bringing together leading voices in cinema to explore how women continue to shape the art of storytelling.

Listen to insightful opening remarks by Palme d’Or–winning director Hirokazu Kore-eda, followed by a Women In Motion Talk featuring Mitsuki Takahata, Kento Nakajima, Miyuki Fukuma, and Debra Zane on casting and the evolving role of women in film.

#WomenInMotion

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