You first started working on ‘Bird in the Peninsula’ 10 years ago. In which ways did the idea of the film evolve within this time?

The general flow and development of the film have not changed much from the conception I had 10 years ago. The theme of the film is "What is Ritual?", "What does it mean to grow up?" I have been thinking about this subjectively and sometimes objectively. In the past 10 years I have gotten married and had children, so I am not only in a position to talk about my own growth, but also in a position to help others grow. This did not change the content of the film, but it did make me think more consciously not only about the people who grow, but also about the people who make them grow.

Why are rituals fascinating for you?

I like to see people doing these everyday "rituals". The purpose of the ritual didn’t matter to me. The strangeness, humorousness, and loveliness of people (sometimes animals) doing those rituals matter.

I have been attracted to how people in the rituals do the same movement together in accordance with the decided manners and customs. They don’t have a doubt about their actions.

In my previous films, the motif of rituals appears many times. Also in these cases, what was the most important thing is the action itself. The ritual was important not for what it was, but as the ritual itself.

I saw a documentary film that shows a practice scene of a performance of dances at a traditional festival in a village. The performance is that the children dance to the sound of whistles, drums, and shouts. I forgot the details of the performance and what kind of dance it was but I remember clearly how one adult looked at the children who practiced the decided movements forming a circle really carefully as if he was a judge as he walked round and round. There was no expression in the eyes of the children as if they were dead. By watching this scene, a lot of inspiration and the ideas of the scenes was born in my brain. What is a ritual for being a human? It’s the question I never had although I have loved it but now I can have a part of the answer by making this film.

The movie has a dream-like, surreal feel to it. What were your inspirations for the visual style?

I like strange mysteries. The unreal that peeks out of reality, the extraordinary that lurks in the everyday. I am interested in the mysteries that arise when we encounter such strange spaces and times. Furthermore, seemingly unrelated mysteries sometimes show a connection at a certain moment, and the excitement of discovering such synchronicity is one of my motivations for making films. So I always keep my antenna up to find strange mysteries and discomforts in my life.

There is a surprising darkness in the film brought by a machine character, which could be interpreted as the relationship between technology and human nature. Can you elaborate on your ideas about that?

In this film, there is a tradition of transforming a child into an adult by performing a ritual, which is what is called "gaining wisdom". The main character, a boy, does not understand the meaning of this, and is just instinctive and pure and innocent. I wanted to depict in the film whether or not it is right for him to formally develop wisdom, i.e., make him an adult. Which is human nature I do not know, but for him the rites of passage to adulthood did not work. The dark room scene represents the present in this film, and the machine and the overgrown boy connected to it in the room symbolize "ritual failure" and "failure to grow up".