“My hometown is in a rural area and it was mostly the big imported films that were shown at the local theater. There were a lot of sci-fi movies, and they made me want to become a director. But there were hardly any of those kinds of films made in Japan, so it was difficult to imagine that. Close Encounters of the Third Kind made a big impression on me and it’s a film I watched over and over. I don’t know whether it influenced me but I directed a love story called Sunadokei (Sand Clock) in 2008, and I watched it every single day while I was making that film.”