Japanese-Brazilian Grief Drama 'Yellow Chrysanthemum' Seeks Funding at Tokyo Gap-Financing Market

A teenager confronting a family loss that no one will discuss sits at the center of "Yellow Chrysanthemum," the debut feature from Japanese-Brazilian director André Hayato Saito. The project is one of those presented at this year's Tokyo Gap-Financing Market.

The story unfolds in São Paulo in July 2014, while Brazil hosts the World Cup. Erika, 16, is a third-generation Japanese-Brazilian who feels like an outsider in the country where she was born and wants no connection to her family's roots.

Her rejection traces back to an old wound. When Erika was 7, her cousin Yam, also her closest friend, disappeared during a traditional festival in the Liberdade neighborhood while Erika's mother was watching the children. The family has lived in guilty silence ever since.

Things shift when Erika befriends Bianca, a Black classmate grieving the recent death of her mother. Bianca is open about her sorrow, and as the two grow closer, Erika's feelings resurface and her family can no longer avoid facing Yam's absence.

Saito said the story draws on his own childhood. "I vividly remember being a little boy, sitting in the bathroom with my father, when I suddenly asked him where we go after we die. He paused for a moment and answered with a long and profound silence," he said. Growing up in a Japanese-Brazilian household, he came to see that silence in his family could express love and respect while also concealing pain.

His earlier short films explore grief, memory, identity and life between two cultures, and he describes the feature as a continuation of that work. One of them, "Amarela," also follows a Japanese-Brazilian teenager named Erika who rejects her family's traditions, across the length of a World Cup final between Brazil and France. It competed for the short film Palme d'Or at Cannes in 2024, was shortlisted for the live-action short Oscar at the 98th Academy Awards, and won best live-action short at Brazil's Grande Otelo Awards. It belongs to a trilogy of shorts, with "Kokoro to Kokoro" and "Vento Dourado," made with São Paulo-based MyMama Entertainment.

"I don't want to offer easy answers or a conventional sense of closure. I hope audiences will recognize something of their own families in Erika's journey, regardless of their cultural backgrounds, and reflect on the things that remain unspoken in their own lives," Saito said.

The Brazil, Japan, Germany and France co-production is in pre-production after several years of development. It took part in TorinoFilmLab, where it won the TorinoFilmLab Production Award, and was selected for Focus Copro at Cannes. The team plans to shoot a key sequence at a traditional Japanese Toro Nagashi ceremony in Brazil in November.

Producer Mayra Faour Auad, founder of MyMama Entertainment, produced "Amarela" and has more than 20 credits, most of them international co-productions. MyMama is developing the film with One Two Films, Loaded Films and Blue Monday. In Tokyo, Faour Auad said the team hopes to close the financing gap and meet producers, distributors and sales agents who can take the film to audiences across Asia. "Given the film's Japanese-Brazilian roots, finding an audience in Japan has particular meaning for us," she said.

Saito is also developing his second feature, "Little Faults," which earned a place in Turin's Boost IT Lab this year. It follows an aging Japanese-Brazilian woman living in Japan who begins committing minor offenses, hoping to end up in prison, where she believes she might finally be cared for and feel she belongs. The Tokyo Gap-Financing Market runs as part of TIFFCOM, the content market attached to the Tokyo International Film Festival.