Rotterdam 2025 Interview: Miwako Van Weyenberg Talks SOFT LEAVES, International Influences, Child Actors, and Zooming In

Contributing Writer; London (@blakethinks)
Rotterdam 2025 Interview: Miwako Van Weyenberg Talks SOFT LEAVES, International Influences, Child Actors, and Zooming In

Half-Japanese-half-Belgian kid Yuna (Lill Berteloot) lives a safe, static life with her Belgian father (Geert Van Rampelberg), until one day he suffers a major accident and falls into a coma.

Suddenly, Yuna finds the walls of her established existence falling away one by one, as her brother (Kaito Defoort), estranged Japanese mother (Masako Tomita), and new half-sister (Sara Hamasaki) each arrive in Belgium to explore where they all go from here.

Premiering this week in the Big Screen Competition section of IFFR, Soft Leaves is an intrinsically transnational film playing a stage built for transnational dialogues. It's exciting to speak with writer-director Miwako Van Weyenberg as her film prepares to take its first steps into the wider world.

ScreenAnarchy: Where did the concept for the film emerge from? What was its genesis?

Miwako Van Weyenberg: It's a difficult question, because it's a mix of everything. I often get the question "is it autobiographical?". That's the easy version of the question. The answer is that this is not what I myself went through as a child, but I know these emotions very well. I'm also half Japanese, half Belgian. I grew up in Belgium and spent my summers in Japan.

I made short films before this feature, and two out of the three of them also touch on this subject. It's something I have a lot to say about. I have the urge to tell the untold stories of these characters.

Do you feel you fulfilled that urge fully with this feature, or are you going to be exploring these themes in your future work?

I think I'll be [exploring it] in different ways. It was never my intent with Soft Leaves to tell a story about cultural differences or racism. It's more about the personal, intimate experience of being a child, coincidentally growing up across different cultures. I think there are different ways to tell those stories, and I'm not done with them yet.

Were there films about childhood that inspired and influenced you as you shaped the film? And if there were, did both European and Japanese films shape it? SOFT LEAVES has a feel that sits somewhere between the two regions.

There is a mix in my inspirations. One of my big heroes in cinema is Kore-eda [Hirokazu] I grew up in Japanese cinema. My biggest heroes are Kore-eda and Kitano Takeshi.

Hana-Bi is one of my favourite films of all time. I watch it at least a few times a year, and I believe I've now seen it over 50 times. It's not a film that people would say, oh yeah, of course, Hana-Bi and Soft Leaves. It's a very different world, a different universe. But there's something in the feeling and in the suddenness that inspires me in those films. I think it's because I grew up with Japanese cinema. There are many great films with that subtle, simple way of storytelling in European cinema.

I thought of Somai Shinji's MOVING watching this film as well, another favourite of mine.

Yeah, I love that film. That's one I discovered recently.

Are there particular European films that you'd spotlight as influential? Or is that a tougher question?

It is a tougher question. Because, in Japanese cinema, I have my heroes in film directors. In European cinema, it's more that I have specific films.

But yes, a lot of Belgian cinema. For example, Fien Troch. We have the same producer, and she's the reason that I met my producer in the first place. Our cinema differs, but it inspires me how she works with simple storytelling. It stays intimate. There's something that attracts me about keeping it in the family, to not have a hundred other characters in the film, to really focus. If there's a distinct zoom on a character or a family, that's something that I really like.

Speaking of distinct zooms, I feel that's your directorial signature in this film. You have an understated, pulled-back style, but there's this subtle, slow zoom-in on scenes that recurs throughout. Is that instinctual for you?

It is quite instinctual. Me and my director of photography, Tristan Galand, we focused on an intuitive and simple, visual method of storytelling. We wanted you to feel the camera, to really feel its movements. It was a compact way of telling, a minimalist approach.

You frame a lot of hallways, a lot of rooms as rectangles. It's effective.

I'm a big fan of simple symmetry, but at the same time, not too clean. It has to be human.

Tell me about casting. There's an authenticity to your actors, not just in who they are, but in how they perform it.

I'm very much in love with them, they're my dream cast. It was the first role of each of the kids in the film. There's something special about children acting for the first time, something authentic. I like working with children who don't have acting experience, and adult actors who have a lot of experience. They lift each other up from their differing standpoints.

We saw a lot of half-Japanese, half-Belgian kids. There were around 70 applicants, which is crazy for such a specific casting call. It's a stereotype that every director seems to say, but I saw Lill, she introduced herself, and that was that.

In my three short films, and now Soft Leaves, it's always children as the main characters. I often get the question 'is it difficult to work with children?'. But I find it difficult to work with adults, because I'm not used to it.

It's important to talk to the child actors as if they're adults. I believe they fully understand the emotions of the film, because I casted [like as like], they're also half Japanese-half Belgian, living in Belgium. I try not to approach it from my own point of view, but from a mix of their experiences in life and what their characters are going through. I do that with the adults too.

You imbue your characters with equal interiority. It makes sense for each of them to act in the way that they do, to have the motivations and feelings that they do. How do you balance them when writing and directing? You have a main character, we're somewhat filtered through her, and yet we can feel everyone.

In the writing process, it was a real focus on Yuna, not so much the family. It was during the shoot, and in post-production, that we noticed that there were layers that could be told together with Yuna's story. The mother, for example, is extremely complex. I think she's in one of the most difficult positions in the film. It grew organically. I wasn't aware of the layers during the writing process, and it all came together afterwards.

I love the colour palette, and I'm curious about the wardrobe. Were Yuna's outfits picked out with precision?

It was very intentional. The DoP, art director, and I had those conversations right at the start of the process. I had a clear image, I always call it 'pastel with a touch of grey'. Red is a colour that I wanted to avoid, and if you ask me why, I have no idea. It was simply a feeling that it had to be that palette, that's how I saw the film and its characters.

I was used to seeing Lill in her own clothes, we did the fittings, and then suddenly she was Yuna. We did the fittings with Lill and Kaito, I saw them together, and suddenly they were brother and sister. It was magic.

Who did you make this film for? There's a great spectrum of audiences who will respond to it, who will find something personal within it.

A difficult question. Of course, the stereotypical response is that I hope it's for as many people as possible, but that's a boring answer. And it's also not true in the case of most films.
When we did test screenings, it was interesting to speak with young mothers. There's a lot of having to let go in the film that resonates if you're a parent. This is the film that I wanted to make, but it's also the film that I wanted to see. I would have loved to have this kind of representation when I was younger. It's a mirror that is rarely used. I'm very excited to hear from diasporic audiences.

When the film opens, we find Yuna up in a tree. Why introduce her there?

The first idea for that scene was that I wanted her to be playing hide-and-seek, to be in her own little world. In the beginning, she's in a cocoon with her father, a safe bubble. The tree came naturally, because it's an innocent place where she can be herself.

As a final question: what do you want audiences to take away from Soft Leaves, whether that's a feeling or a thought -- what would you like this film to grant people in their own lives?

I go back to my previous answer about the different audiences that the film could attract. They could be half-Japanese-half-Belgian, Dutch, it doesn't matter. If a person sees this film and has the experience of identifying with a character, I would really love that.

In a way, I hope that they feel something so personal that I couldn't possibly know about it. Something that they lived through, that I couldn't ever know. That's something that I hope, that it's a zoom-in for them.

Soft Leaves premiered at the 54th International Film Festival Rotterdam and is currently seeking distribution.

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IFFRInternational Film Festival RotterdamMiwako Van WeyenbergRotterdam 2025Soft LeavesLill BertelootGeert Van RampelbergMasako TomitaDrama

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