In the spring of 2020, Kazuhiro Soda found himself stranded thousands of miles from home, just as the COVID-19 pandemic was sending much of the world into lockdown. The documentary filmmaker, then based in New York, had returned to Japan with his wife and producer, Kiyoko Kashiwagi, to promote their latest feature, “Zero.” But return flights to the States were canceled and central Tokyo was like a ghost town.
“We wanted to escape,” he recalls.
They headed to Ushimado, a small coastal town in Okayama Prefecture, western Japan, where Kashiwagi has family roots. The couple had frequently vacationed there in the past, and had also shot a pair of films, “Oyster Factory” (2015) and “Inland Sea” (2018), in these environs. In 2021, they relocated permanently after 27 years in New York — and not too long afterward, Soda’s latest film began to take shape.
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