“The Color of You” premieres at the 29th Busan International Film Festival! Official report of the event featuring Director Naoko Yamada and Sayu Suzuki has arrived!The currently-showing animated film “Kimi no Iro” had its premiere at the 29th Busan International Film Festival, where director Naoko Yamada and Sayu Suzuki also held a teach-in.

The official report of the event has arrived, packed with behind-the-scenes stories.

The 29th Busan International Film Festival began on Wednesday, October 2nd local time in Korea, and director Naoko Yamada’s “The Color of You” had its Korean premiere on Thursday, October 3rd at 7:30pm local time.

The Busan International Film Festival, which is renowned as the largest film festival in Asia, screens around 300 domestic and international films (around 100 world premieres) and attracts around 200,000 visitors. The “Window to Asian Cinema” category, in which this film was entered, showcases the excellent works of Asia’s most talented film directors with a variety of perspectives and styles, and also includes Japanese film “The Namibian Desert” by Yamanaka Yoko. Tickets for the 335 seats at the venue, Lotte Cinema Centum City, were sold out one week before the screening.

The audience was mostly in their 20s, with an equal ratio of men and women, and some enthusiastic fans were seen holding boats with slogans such as “Director Yamada is my color” and “Director Yamada is my color.”

After the screening, Director Yamada and Sayu Suzuki took the stage to loud applause and gave a speech in Korean, which was met with thunderous applause and cheers from the audience. The teach-in started immediately, and when asked why he chose color as his theme, Director Yamada replied, “I wanted to create an animation that people could feel, one that would stir the sensitivities of the viewer with color and sound, and that would fully activate their imagination.”

The next question was about her choice of colors, and she said, “I wanted to paint colors that would make Totsuko happy when she looked at them. The theme is that you are blue, Rui is green, and Totsuko is red, which are the three primary colors of light. When they come together they become pure white, which I thought represented their future and their infinite possibilities. That’s why I chose colors in this work to depict light.”

When asked about the audition, Director Yamada said of his first impression of Suzuki, “I heard her voice without having met her before, and it was love at first ear. She has a happy voice like a ringing bell, so I thought that with her, we could make ‘Your Color’ a very happy piece, and I wanted to work with her.” Looking back on the day of the audition, Suzuki revealed, “I thought I had no choice but to throw myself into the role and act carefully. At the time of the audition, I was the same age as Totsuko, so I acted naturally, life-sized, without putting too much effort into it.”

When asked about the Nagasaki location that served as the model, Director Yamada reflected, “Nagasaki is a special place in Japan. The moment I arrived in Nagasaki for location scouting, the air was wonderful and the people of the city were warm, and I felt like I learned about the kindness and accepting nature that I want to portray in this work. We used Nagasaki as a model, and I think the spirituality (of Nagasaki) has a positive effect on the work.”

When asked about their favorite ice cream flavor and the color they would like to be, in relation to the scenes that appear in the film, Director Yamada answered with a smile, “I like chocolate mint,” and Suzuki replied, “I like caramel.” When asked what color they would like to be, Director Yamada said, “I would like to be yellow. Because it goes well with various colors.”

Suzuki said with enthusiasm, “I want to be a passionate red. I want to be passionate about everything I do, so I’m red!” When asked about the music he composed with Ushio Kensuke, Yamada happily revealed a behind-the-scene story, saying, “We sometimes give names to noises, but in this film, I had Ushio program blue noise in the scenes with you, and green noise in the scenes with Louis, and we hid each of them. I don’t think people would notice if I didn’t tell them, so I’m glad I was able to tell them!”

When Suzuki was asked about her first voice acting experience and singing, she replied, “It was my first time as a voice actor, so there were a lot of things I didn’t know, but the director gave me specific advice like, ‘When you lie, act like you’re possessed by the devil,’ so I responded to that and gave it my all while doing the dubbing, which was fun and difficult.” She also revealed an episode about the recording, saying, “I participated in the singing as a chorus, but I was told not to practice before the recording, so I held back and showed up on the day (laughs).”

When asked about the connection to his past works, Director Yamada said, “I make each work as if it were a new experience, and I try not to think of it in relation to my other works. However, since they are made by the same person, there may be some slight similarities. In each of my works, I try to deal carefully with people’s hearts, and that is a belief that I hold dear and have never changed.” He spoke about his thoughts on creating works.

最後、鈴川は「山田監督の作品は言葉では説明できない、言葉の壁を越えて伝わってくる感情があるので、たくさんの方々に観ていただきたいです」、山田監督は「この作品は悩みを外に出せない子たちが友達と出会って開放していく姿を描いている。観ている方も何かを開放するきっかけになったら、心が楽になってくれたらいいなと思います。観ている方に寄り添えるようにひとつひとつ大切に作った作品なので、感受性をフル活用してぜひ楽しんでいただけたら嬉しいです！」とメッセージを送り、2人一緒に「プサン、サランヘヨ（釜山、愛してます）！」と挨拶してティーチインは幕を閉じた。

韓国では10月12日より300館以上にて公開が決定している。海外からも賞賛の声が鳴りやまない映画『きみの色』は日本でも絶賛上映中！ぜひ劇場の大スクリーンで何度でもお楽しみいただきたい。