‘My Grandfather Is A Nihonjin': Director Behind Brazilian-Japanese Animation Details Why She Didn't Want To Make An Anime
EXCLUSIVE: The director behind My Grandfather is a Nihonjin, an animation about the Japanese immigrant experience in Brazil, has said she did not want to lean too heavily into anime but forge her own unique blend of Japanese and South American style.
Speaking before its screening at Annecy, Celia Catunda revealed her desire to 'create another style to make this film,' combining the Japanese animation tradition with Brazil to give the movie an entirely fresh flavor.
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The film comes 30 years after a treaty of friendship was signed between Brazil and Japan in Paris and Brazil is now home to the largest Japanese community outside Japan, with an estimated 2 million people with Japanese descendants thought to be living there. The pic follows Noboru, a young boy from São Paolo who discovers his Japanese roots. When he's assigned a homework assignment about his family, Noboru turns to his grandfather Hideo to learn more about his heritage. Despite having always avoided his past, Hideo agrees to share his story.
The film is crafted in a hand-drawn 2D animation style, incorporating Japanese cultural influences.
'From the beginning, many people asked if we would do an anime-style feature and I felt I didn't want to do that,' said Catunda, who runs My Grandfather is a Nihonjin producer Pinguim Content. 'Japanese animation is so strong. I wanted to create another style that went a bit Brazilian and wasn't completely Japanese.'
The movie is based on the acclaimed novel by Oscar Nakasato and Catunda incorporates her own experiences growing up with friends who had Japanese heritage. She worked closely with Oscar Oiwa, a contemporary artist born in São Paolo to Japanese immigrants who helped with setup and visuals.
Catunda does not have Japanese heritage herself and engaged creative consultants to make sure she didn't stray too close to stereotype, especially when it came to the music, which was quite a challenge. The film leads with a musical style that combines Japanese sounds with Brazilian music from the countryside.
'Sometimes you are not aware of the stereotypes you are falling into so it was important to have a Japanese consultant who supervised the scripts and worked on the characters,' she added. 'When the grandfather opened his arms wide she would tell us that wouldn't work as a Japanese person would not open his arms like that, he would be more closed off. And the music could sound a little 'generic Japanese' at times so we needed to be specific.'
The immigrant experience
Given her upbringing in a Brazilian melting pot, Catunda was inspired to make a movie about the immigrant experience, and many of Noboru's friends in the film have differing backgrounds including one who is a descendant of slavery.
Catunda believes that animation is the perfect medium to convey themes around immigration and she said one of her favorite movies is Dounia and the Princess of Aleppo, which was at Annecy three years back.
'The way you design characters conveys a lot of the cultural aspects and you can also invite different voices to make things more realistic,' she added. 'But at the same time you don't need to have too many different actors from too many different places. Animation can be more symbolic.'
Central to these themes is the conflict between Noboru and his grandfather, Catunda explained.
'For most of his life [the grandfather] had wanted to keep being a Japanese person but the grandson is the opposite, he wants to reaffirm his Brazilian identity,' she added. 'This was a good source of conflict for the whole movie. We wanted the arc of both characters to be about them discovering the complexity of their identities. That is the beauty of the migration process and what makes Brazilian culture so rich.'
My Grandfather is a Nihonjin has landed a coveted premiere at Annecy on Thursday and this comes at a good time for independent animation, following Latvian movie Flow's Oscar win, which saw the film about a cat trying to survive a post-apocalyptic world beat off big-budget competition from the American studios.
'Flow was a very good thing for all the people that work in animation because we need to seek different things and sometimes budgets can be so big that they scare us,' said Catunda. 'I'm a very strong believer in stories over budgets. I think we can always dream big and being at Annecy will give us the visibility we need.'
Catunda hopes there will be a 'happy road ahead' for My Grandfather is a Nihonjin. It is set to screen at several more festivals in the coming months.
Along with marketing My Grandfather is a Nihonjin, Catunda is also developing Luna and the Missing Rivers – An Amazon Adventure, a spin-off of popular TV series Earth to Luna set in the Amazon, which tackles themes of climate change.
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