Japanese-Brazilian Film 'Yellow Chrysanthemum' Pitches to Tokyo Financiers

André Hayato Saito is in Tokyo this week looking for producers, distributors and sales agents to help finish funding "Yellow Chrysanthemum," his first feature. The Japanese-Brazilian director is presenting the project at the Tokyo Gap-Financing Market, which runs alongside TIFFCOM, the content market attached to the Tokyo International Film Festival. The film has been in development for several years and is now in pre-production, with a Brazil, Japan, Germany and France co-production structure in place.

The story centers on Erika, a 16-year-old third-generation Japanese-Brazilian living in São Paulo in July 2014, when Brazil hosted the World Cup. Erika feels like an outsider in the country where she was born and wants no connection to her family's roots. That distance traces back to an incident when she was 7: her cousin Yam, also her closest friend, disappeared during a traditional festival in the Liberdade neighborhood while Erika's mother was watching the children. The family has lived in silence about it ever since. Erika later befriends Bianca, a Black classmate grieving the death of her mother, and Bianca's openness about her sorrow brings Erika's own feelings to the surface.

Saito said the material comes from his own upbringing. He remembers asking his father where people go after they die and receiving "a long and profound silence" in reply. In a Japanese-Brazilian household, he came to understand that such silence could carry love and respect while also hiding pain. "I don't want to offer easy answers or a conventional sense of closure," he said. "I hope audiences will recognize something of their own families in Erika's journey, regardless of their cultural backgrounds, and reflect on the things that remain unspoken in their own lives."

His earlier shorts have traveled: "Amarela," which follows a Japanese-Brazilian teenager named Erika who rejects her family's traditions across a World Cup final between Brazil and France, competed for the short film Palme d'Or at Cannes in 2024, was shortlisted for the live-action short Oscar at the 98th Academy Awards, and won best live-action short at Brazil's Grande Otelo Awards. "Amarela" is part of a trilogy with "Kokoro to Kokoro" and "Vento Dourado," made with São Paulo-based MyMama Entertainment. The project also took part in TorinoFilmLab, where it won the TorinoFilmLab Production Award, and was selected for Focus Copro at Cannes.

Producer Mayra Faour Auad, who founded MyMama Entertainment and produced "Amarela," has more than 20 credits, most of them international co-productions. MyMama is developing the film with One Two Films, Loaded Films and Blue Monday. In Tokyo, Faour Auad said the team wants to close the financing gap and meet industry professionals who can carry the film to viewers across Asia. "Given the film's Japanese-Brazilian roots, finding an audience in Japan has particular meaning for us," she said. The team plans to shoot a key sequence at a traditional Japanese Toro Nagashi ceremony in Brazil in November.

Saito is also at work on a second feature, "Little Faults," which was selected for Turin's Boost IT Lab this year. It follows an aging Japanese-Brazilian woman living in Japan who commits minor offenses, hoping to end up in prison, where she believes she might be cared for and feel she belongs.