Thursday, April 25th, 2:30 PM
Friday April 26th, 12:30 – 2:30 PM
Sunday April 28th, 2:30 – 4:30 PM
The ex-Syrian refugee and a food deliverer, Yasser meets Eita, a solitary Japanese boy in the city park, and they grow a family-like bond as they play soccer and cook together after Yasser’s bike gets stolen.
Yuichiro Nakada was born in Tokyo raised in Chiba, After graduating from University of California at Santa Barbara as physics major, he studied astrophysics at Munich University Graduate School in Germany.
After dropping out from the graduate school, he worked for foreign manufacturing company, JAXA, and National Astronomical Observatory in Japan. He gradually stepped into the movie industries while taking a ghostwriting workshop held by Eiga 24ku. His directed short film, ‘Goodbye my son’ was selected as an official selection in more than 70 film festivals in the world.He constantly produces and directs independent films.
In 2019, he participated in Jidaigeki workshop in Kyoto filmmakers’ lab as a soundman in Shochiku team. During the filmmaking workshop, he collaborated with Shochiku production team and other selected members all over the world among 300 applicants.
In 2021, he has directed and produced the short film, ‘Gift’ and portrayed the family like bond between Syrian refugee and a solitary Japanese boy.
In 2022, he has been selected the student of international Film Business Academy in Busan Asian film school and he is going to learn producing skills with all the aspiring film producer candidates in Asia from March.
As a big fun of cat, he lives with two adorable cats that he rescued from his neighborhood.
While the entire world was divided and filled with a sense of stagnation due to the pandemic since 2020, my father’s long-term hospitalization due to chronic depression and aspiration pneumonia from prostate cancer, 10 years unpaid debt, the pressure and stress from a new workplace, and so many other negative emotions caused the countless suicidal attempt in my mind, which had been the toughest year in my lifetime.
Amid the endless despair, the light constantly illuminates us and the strength from the core to live with a laugh that blows away such pain with joy. In this film, I would like to depict a drama through his interactions with a Japanese boy who grows up in a single-mother household with different religions, languages, and ages.
The film stars Yasser, a Syrian refugee who escaped the fires of civil war in his homeland, Syria and started his new life in Japan from scratch and it spotlights his work as a UberEats driver who never stop stroking the pedal amid the fierce pandemic.
The boy reflects some of my elementary school days, when my parents both worked in the 90s and spent solitary childhood as a llatchkey kid. There were sense of loneliness and the compassion toward parents who worked until late overlap and resonate with the feeling when teleworking alone at that time, and also there was the feeling of missing people and the strong desire to connect with the inseparable people even though the times have changed.
In this film, with “empathy” as the key word, I would like to present something that will be a flash of guiding light to us living in the Corona disaster by depicting the trajectory of the family-like bond that connects people by intertwining those divisions. Delivering the film to the audience in the world, I am hoping that this film can light a beacon of laughter and hope in the hearts of the audience even a little amid this long and never-ending corona disaster.
Yuichiro Nakada
Yuichiro Nakada
Yuichiro Nakada
Yasser Jamal Alddin "Yasser", Eita Shimura "Eita Tanaka", Emiko Izawa "MIchie Tanaka"
2023
U.S.A.
00:25:00
