Capturing the Cannes Film Festival remotely is a complicated matter. Competitive film screenings are under strict embargo, so I have to interview Japanese Brazilian director Andre Hayato Saito without having seen his latest short film, ‘Amarela’.
“I can do some spoilers,” the 39-year-old filmmaker jokes, speaking via video chat from his home outside Sao Paulo, the day before flying to France for the festival.
‘Amarela’, which is competing for the Palme d’Or for short film, is part of a trilogy that delves into Saito’s family history and cultural background. For the 2022 documentary ‘Kokoro to Kokoro’, he traveled to Japan to meet a close friend of his late grandmother, who had emigrated to Brazil and raised a family of ten children.
