Biography
Born in Japan in 1992, Yusaku Matsumoto shot his debut feature film “Noise” at the age of 23. The film screened in multiple film festivals around the world including the 25th Raindance Film Festival in UK and the 41st Montreal World Film Festival in Canada, which was followed by a Japanese theatrical distribution in 2019 and a limited theatrical run in the US. His short film “Made in Japan” won the Audience Award, Special Jury Prize, and the Best Actor at MOOSIC LAB 2018. In his versatile career, Matsumoto has since directed many music videos, short films, commercials, as well as TV episodes for Amazon Prime and Hulu among others. His third and latest feature film “Winny” debuted in the top ten at the domestic box office in March 2023.
Filmography
~Feature films~
Winny
It’s All My Fault
Noise
~Short films~
Bagmati River
Tokyo Sunrise
Made In Japan
~TV~
Yukionna to Kani wo Kuu (TV Tokyo)
Kamisama no Ekohiiki (Hulu)
Shonan Junai Gumi! (Amazon Prime)
Nogizaka Cinemas ~STORY of 46~ (FOD)
Find them on social media
Official Profile
X (Twitter) @kakifuraiyusaku
10+5+5+5 Questions for Yusaku Matsumoto
1. What is the first film in your memory?
Black Rain (Ridley Scott)
2. What are some of your favorite films?
BIUTIFUL (Alejandro González Iñárritu)
Princess Mononoke (Hayao Miyazaki)
Still Life (Jia Zhangke)
HANABI (Takeshi Kitano)
Sonatine (Takeshi Kitano)
3. Which creators have you been inspired by or influenced by?
Alejandro González Iñárritu
Dardenne brothers
Ken Loach
Haruki Murakami
Hayao Miyazaki
Takeshi Kitano
4. What are the films that shook your world or changed your life?
BIUTIFUL (Alejandro González Iñárritu)
L’Enfant (The Child) (Dardenne brothers)
HANABI (Takeshi Kitano)
Princess Mononoke (Hayao Miyazaki)
5. Are there any Japanese directors of your generation you are inspired by?
No one in particular.
6. What does filmmaking mean to you?
It is my whole life.
7. What are you interested in outside of films and filmmaking?
I don’t really have any. I wish I did.
8. Where’s your happy place?
A coffee shop in Shinjuku 3-chome (I can make great progress in script writing.)
9. What are the customs or phenomena that are unique to Japan that you want other people to know?
I think the scenery in Akihabara in this film is a kind of unique culture of Japan. I would be happy if you could see the film from that perspective as well.
10. Where would you be in 10 years?
I want to be making films overseas.
ABOUT YOUR FILM “WINNY“
1. What is your favorite moment in the film? (no spoilers)
All the scenes are my favorites, but one of my picks would be the one where Kaneko and lawyer Dan are eating sanma (mackerel pike) at a diner. We were actually going to shoot a two-shot as well as single shots to cut back with, but their performance was so great that we ended up showing the scene in a single take of a two-shot. It’s a great scene.
2. Why did you decide to write/make this film?
Like many people in my generation, I did not know the Winny incident at all. After getting an offer to consider making this film, I did my own research on the incident, and I became convinced that the incident was a major catalyst of Japan’s “lost decade” or the nation’s descent. In addition, many people in the younger generation today do not know about the Winny incident, so I thought that featuring it as a film will encourage them to think about this incident once again. So, I decided to make this film.
3. Were there any films that you watched as a reference or a source of inspiration?
“Snowden” by Oliver Stone
“Richard Jewell” by Clint Eastwood
“The Post” by Steven Spielberg
“The Trial of the Chicago 7” by Aaron Sorkin
4. Was there any music you were listening to or book you were reading while you were making this film?
Hans Zimmer is one of my favorite composers, so I was listening to his music a lot. Another album I was listening to was the soundtrack of “Snowden” by Craig Armstrong.
5. Any fun behind-the-scenes anecdotes or episodes you’d like to share?
The trail scene was shot on a set we put together in a gym of an abolished school. We shot it in the middle of summer, but the scene was supposed to be in the middle of winter. We were all struggling because it was very hot! lol.
Message to our audience about this film
Kaneko Isamu was the first person in the world to realize a network that would become the competing pillar of modern Internet culture nearly 20 years ago. It is a visionary world of networks where individuals support each other to survive without relying on a central server. However, the development of Winny came to an end with his arrest in 2004. While the Winny trial was going on, new digital services such as YouTube and iTunes were emerging from the United States.
If Mr. Kaneko had not been arrested, if he were still alive, Japan might be a very different place today. What is frustrating is that a genius like him was literally robbed of his future by the seven years of his trial. I believe that the culture of film is to shine a light on a story that has been buried in a certain point in history. My hope is to shed light on the time lived by Isamu Kaneko, a genius programmer who has been buried and remained unknown in the world, and by Mr. Dan and the defense lawyers who supported Kaneko and fought alongside him. I hope that this film will be a test for us human beings to live more freely, and equally.
ABOUT YOUR FILM “MADE IN JAPAN“
1. What is your favorite moment in the film? (no spoilers)
The very first scene of the film. Directing this scene, I paid a lot of attention to what was not seen on the screen.
2. Why did you decide to write/make this film?
I was strongly inspired by “La Haine” by Mathieu Kassovitz. I wanted to make a Japanese “La Haine”, and I made this film.
3. Were there any films that you watched as a reference or a source of inspiration?
“La Haine” by Mathieu Kassovitz
4. Was there any music you were listening to or book you were reading while you were making this film?
“Nigenai!” by an idol group You’ll Melt More!, which is a song we used in the film.
5. Any fun behind-the-scenes anecdotes or episodes you’d like to share?
All the actors for this film were cast through auditions. We built the roles together through various workshops we did. There are also several scenes that were composed by etude. I wonder if the audience can catch that; I hope you enjoy seeing the film from such a point of view.
Message to our audience about this film
In one book that I encountered, the author questioned what would extinguish the human race. The author of that book said the media would. The media can both save human beings or kill them, the book said. I am a filmmaker, and film is a media. In a way, I’m on the side that generates the media. As someone who creates and generates the media, I felt the need to tackle this theme in my film. I hope you watch and enjoy it.
ABOUT YOUR FILM “NOISE“
1. What is your favorite moment in the film? (no spoilers)
The streets and scenery of Akihabara that exist in the background almost throughout the film. The scenery of the city now is drastically different from when we shot this film about 7 or 8 years ago.
2. Why did you decide to write/make this film?
The catalyst was when I was in junior high school, a friend of mine committed a suicide. Around the same time, there was the indiscriminate mass killings in Akihabara. I wondered if killing oneself and killing someone (in an indiscriminate way) could be somehow fundamentally the same. That question was the starting point of making this film.
3. Were there any films that you watched as a reference or a source of inspiration?
The films I got inspiration from include “Crash” (dir. Paul Haggis) and “21 Grams” (dir. Alejandro González Iñárritu).
I watched almost all the ensemble films out there.
4. Was there any music you were listening to or book you were reading while you were making this film?
“Save Me” by banvox, which is also the theme song for this film. A novel “Muchi no Namida” (Tears of Ignorance) by Norio Nagayama, “19-sai no Chizu” (The Nineteen-Year-Old’s Map) by Kenji Nakagami, etc.
5. Any fun behind-the-scenes anecdotes or episodes you’d like to share?
As a true independent film, there were only three main crew members. Each of us fulfilled multiple roles and wore many hats during the production.
Also, I used a lot of improvisations by the actors in almost every scene.
Message to our audience about this film
It has been seven or eight years since I shot this film. This film is inspired by the indiscriminate killings in Akihabara that took place in 2008. Why did such an incident have to happen? What could we do to prevent similar incidents from happening in the future? To look for answers to those questions, I made this film.
This is my first feature film. Looking at it now, there are many parts that I cannot help but see my inexperience, but the passion for making the film I want to make has not changed since then. It is a film that I felt absolutely compelled to make. It is a film that I had to make. I hope you will watch and enjoy it.