(Adnkronos / Cinematografo.it) – “I wrote this screenplay over the years, the starting point was the song of the same name by Akiko Yano and, in particular, the verse in which he says’ Whatever the distance between us , nothing can stop me from loving you ‘: I heard it about 20 years ago but I believe that today, also in light of the pandemic that forced us into social distance, isolation, it was the best time to make a film ”. The Japanese Kōji Fukada makes his debut in the competition in Venice (in 2016 he won the Jury Prize in Un Certain Regard at Cannes for Harmonium) with ‘Love Life’, a film purchased for Italy by Teodora who will bring it to theaters from 9 September. The protagonist of the film is Taeko (Fumino Kimura), whose life flows quietly alongside her husband Jiro (Kento Nagayama) and her little son Keita (Tetta Shimada), until a dramatic event marks the return of the child’s biological father (Atom Sunada), of which the woman had not heard from for years … “When I create a film I always like to propose credible elements, one is based on the belief that sooner or later one will die, the other is loneliness”, says the director, who adds: “For represent loneliness, however, I prefer not to focus on a person who lives in conditions of isolation, rather to insert him in a couple or family context, because I think it is more interesting to capture him when he realizes that he is alone even if surrounded by others ” To those who ask him if directors such as Hamaguchi (‘Drive My Car’) and Kore’eda (who will receive the Bresson Prize from the Fondazione Ente dello Spettacolo / Rivista del Cinematografo right here in Venice) have After his work, Fukada replies that “since I was a teenager I have seen many films and each of these, in a certain way, has contributed to forming my gaze: Kore’eda, specifically, uses the family as a system, as a microcosm to explore relationships, I instead try to propose the family as a precedent of what will happen when the human being rediscovers himself alone, in solitude “. A feeling that overwhelms the protagonist, played by Fumino Kimura:” film is based on a very intense script, reading it gave me the feeling of finding myself in front of characters who lived an extremely normal life, almost as if it were a life that unfolded around me “, says the actress, who in the development of the story returns to run into the biological father of his son, played by Atom Sunada, a deaf-mute actor: “I am very happy because the culture of the deaf has been included in the film and so far it is something that it happens so often, not even in television programs, while in those where it happens most of the time it is about characters who are returned with pity. In ‘Love Life’ this doesn’t happen and it made me really happy. “” I tried my hand at sign language for the first time, “says the actress, who explains:” It’s not just the gestures, it’s a precise language, which forces the two interlocutors to always look each other in the eye, demonstrating their feelings more sincerely, which is not the case between Taeko and her husband Jiro, since they talk to each other without looking at each other “.