When I choose child actors, I chose them for their personalities. And then I work with their own vocabulary, so I'm not imposing text or dialogue on them: I'm just receiving.
— Hirokazu Kore-eda
The children in 'Nobody Knows' had a resonance with me. The children are projections of myself.
As a son and as a father, there are still various things that I haven't done as well as I should have - that's my dilemma and regret.
My father did not have a lot of security in his life. He did odd jobs. He had a real struggle to make money. He lost a lot of time in his 20s, after the war, because he was sent to a forced-labour camp in Siberia.
Hardly anyone says anything real in the courtroom. Almost everything is decided ahead of time, and the truth is found behind the scenes.
I grew up without a father.
I am hopeful that films can connect people who are in conflict in a separated world.
My mother was really against it when I said I wanted to make films. She said that I should be a civil servant because that was safe, and it had security. But my mother was always very proud of my movies and would give videocassettes of them to all the neighbours.
'Like Father, Like Son' gave me the opportunity to show when it is not good with a father.
When I was 27, I won an honorable mention in a scriptwriting contest and got a television job as an assistant director.
We used to have prawn tempura: that was my mother's favourite dish. But she had to go out to work instead of my father, so she couldn't find the time to cook nice meals. So we ate more modern food: a lot of frozen and instant food. But I never complained about it to my mother.
My mother loved films! She adored Ingrid Bergman, Joan Fontaine, Vivien Leigh. We couldn't afford to go together to the cinema, but she was always watching their movies on TV.
