In a first for him, Japanese filmmaker Kei Ishikawa is excited that his directorial, A Pale View of Hills, after recently being screened at the International Film Festival of India and the Cannes film festival, will soon be available in India via BookMyShow streams.
And he agrees that till a few years back, before the OTT boom, bringing his film here would have been difficult. “That’s true. I am super happy because of it,” he shares.
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“But at the same time, I know students of cinema would anyway have downloaded it from somewhere. When they want it, they find a way! But there are so many small, arthouse films from all over the world that are still not available, and streaming platforms are helping them a lot,” he adds.
His film is an adaptation of the 1982 novel by the same name, authored by Kazuo Ishiguro. Speaking of the challenges in adaptation, he says, “When I decided to make a film on this novel, I felt I had to change some things. The book was told from a mother’s point of view. We changed it to a story about how the daughter discovers the mother’s history.”
Steering the conversation towards the popularity of Indian films in Japan, he shares, “People watch a lot of Bollywood films; they are very popular, especially Baahubali. A lot of my friends watch them. I also recently got to know that the Indian film industry makes a lot of arthouse films. I saw some in Goa. I have to start watching more of them,” Kei says.