A graduate of the University of Tokyo's cinema studies course, Atsushi Funahashi studied directing at the School of Visual Arts in New York and shot his first two films, "Echoes" (2002) and "Big River" (2005), in the United States. With his background as a longtime, English-fluent expat, Funahashi could have conceivably moved his entire career abroad, but the March 11, 2011 triple disaster turned his thoughts decisively toward home.

That day, Funahashi was three weeks away from starting production on the film that was to become "Sakura Namiki no Mankai no Shita ni (Cold Bloom)," but the disaster forced its cancellation. "A year later we got the funding together and made the film again in a different way with a different cast and different production crew," he comments in an interview at Office Kitano, which will corelease the film in Japan with Theatre Tokyo on April 13. "I also had to rewrite the script, because somehow it didn't fit the location."

That location was Hitachi, a coastal city in Ibaraki Prefecture that was hit hard by the earthquake and tsunami — and whose local film commission and government supported his film's production. "They said you can make whatever kind of film you want; all we ask is that you film everything in Hitachi and shoot the cherry trees," he recalls with a wry smile.