Ysana Watanabe

Film

This docu-fiction film explores the reality of “Shinsai babies,” those children born in the epicentre of or on the fringes of a catastrophic earthquake. They embody a subtle interplay between the memory of collapse and the promise of the future.

March 2011. When the meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi power station was filling screens all around the world, my father and I were in France, on tenterhooks as we awaited an imminent birth: that of my cousin. Meanwhile, the news coming out of Japan spoke of nothing but the disaster. The joy of this new arrival, five days after the tragedy, faded away without reaching us, lost somewhere along the telephone line.

The disaster came as a clean break, erecting an invisible barrier that prevented our two childhoods from developing together, separated by fear and the imposed geographical distance.

This project is thus conceived as the home movie that was never able to exist, punctuated by life’s great milestones, and bringing three different generations into dialogue.

In attempting to stitch our childhoods back together, the narrative explores how bonds withstand the trials of the world. Blending personal archives with the effort towards reunion, this film seeks to transform a tragic date into an act of healing, making the image the place of our continuity.

Ysana Watanabe

Découvrir le profil

Born in Marseille in 1999, Ysana Watanabe is a Franco-Japanese artist and filmmaker. A graduate of the École Duperré and a former student at La Fémis via the Fondation Culture & Diversité, she lives and works in Paris. By using digital tools and writing docu-fictional narratives, she explores, in particular, the notion of the “missing archive.” She also works as a creative archivist for the American research studio Outside Observations.

Production

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