Our Correspondence, Now a Film|Off to Cannes

With the film “All of a Sudden” directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi being screened at the Cannes Film Festival, I’m also heading to Cannes tonight on a late flight.

I only learned in late April that I would be invited, and since then everything has been wonderfully hectic leading up to tonight.

Every year around this time, I find myself thinking back to the period when Miyano-san and I exchanged letters — letters that would later become the foundation for the film “All of a Sudden.”

Now, as I wait for my flight at the airport, I’m looking back on what we were talking about around this same time in 2019.

At that point, Miyano-san was in the middle of writing the fourth letter. It was also around the time when people first began saying, “This might actually become a book,” and the two of us were excitedly discussing what that could mean. Those conversations still remain in the record.

The “future beyond” that Miyano-san spoke so passionately about wanting to see — who could ever have imagined that it would one day lead all the way to Cannes?

I’m very much looking forward to seeing the people who helped bring that future into being — including Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Tao Okamoto, Virginie Efira, Kyozo Nagatsuka, and Koudai Kurosaki — shining there in Cannes.

I’m bringing many things with me that help me feel connected to Miyano-san as I travel there.