‘Focus on Katsuya Tomita’

Born in 1972 in Kofu, Japan, the filmmaker Katsuya Tomita has made four feature-length films in twenty years, bearing witness to an atypical career path and technique. After completing his secondary school education he worked on building sites and as a truck driver, investing his savings to film his childhood friends (who took on the role of actors) during weekends and annual holidays. He has always worked independently and in 2003 he created the Kuzoku collective through which he produces and distributes his own films. With his third feature-length film Saudade (2011), filmed in his home town, bears witness to the socio-economic changes of the Japan of those who have been left behind. Tomita's films are on the fringes of documentary. They never simply exist for the sake of existing, the subjects predominate: their non-professional actors, whose stories he gathers, and their environment, that he investigates with all the meticulousness of an archaeologist, as testified by the four years of immersion and research carried out for the preparation of his latest film Bangkok Nites (2016). With this fresco clouded with nostalgia, mainly filmed in Thailand, Tomita has proven himself to be one of the few contemporary filmmakers capable of closely examining the wounds of Japan and Asia caused by the historical and economic upheavals in the world.
- Dimitri Ianni