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Ken Ninomiya was born in 1991 in Osaka. He started his career in film in 2014, with two shorts and he did his feature debut in 2015 with Slum-Polis. Starting with his third film, “The Limit of Sleeping Beauty”, he garnered international attention, with the movie screening in Hong Kong, BiFan (Korea) and Japan FIlmfest Hamburg.

On the occasion of his latest film, “Chiwawa” winning the Best Japanese Film of 2019 in our list, we speak with him about adapting Kyoko Okazaki’s manga, show business and youth in Japan, working with Tadanobu Asano, Chiaki Kuriyama and Mugi Kadowaki, and other topics

Translation by Nikodem Karolak

Why did you decide to adapt Kyoko Okazaki’s manga? Did you find more difficult adapting the work of someone else than writing your own script?

“Chiwawa” is a short comic book that consists merely of thirty four pages. However, at the time I read it, it conveyed...

Creating an amalgamate movie from other movies is occasionally a very hard job, but the result can be great, as Tarantino has proven time and time again, particularly with “Kill Bill”. Ken Ninomiya took the concept a step even further, by using Kyoko Okazaki’s manga as its base in order to shoot a film that loans elements from “Helter Skelter” and “River’s Edge (also based on Okazaki’s works), “The World of Kanako”, but most surprisingly, “Spring Breakers” and even a bit of “Velvet Goldmine”. Let us see how he fared.

“Chiwawa” is screening at Fantasia International Film Festival

The story unfolds in a number of different timelines. Immediately as the film begins, we hear one of the protagonists, Miki, talking about the titular character, Chiwawa, just before we learn that her body was found mutilated. In the next scene, the timeline switches to the past, when Miki...