Two directors with films at this year's Tokyo International Film Festival said they each once kept impending or new motherhood hidden from the people they worked with, speaking at a festival session devoted to raising children while making movies.
Belgium-based Teodora Ana Mihai, whose 'Heysel 85' plays in competition, shared the stage with Japan's Sode Yukiko, whose 'All the Lovers in the Night' debuted at Cannes and screens in Tokyo's Gala Selection. The Tokyo Talks session in the TIFF Lounge, moderated by festival programmer Kondo Kanako, offered childcare for attendees, and a roomful of infants minded by babysitters at the back of the venue periodically made themselves heard.
Sode first spoke publicly about hiding the birth of her second child at a 2021 festival talk with Indonesian director Kamila Andini. She had kept the news even from producers she trusted, convinced that offers would stop once people knew she had a newborn. That daughter starts elementary school in April, and the new film is Sode's first theatrical feature in five years, following 'Aristocrats.'
"The situation in Japan's film world has changed a little," Sode said, adding that she now often hears of female directors a bit younger than her having children, and that for crew members too, choosing to give birth feels more possible than it did five years ago.
Mihai, who won the festival's special jury prize in 2021 for 'La Civil' and returned in 2024 with best actress winner 'Traffic,' was 37 when her daughter was born. She had decided early that she would not pick between motherhood and a profession she considers her passion, but fear of social rules pushed the decision late. Six months pregnant in winter, and quite thin at the time, she was still hiding the pregnancy under her clothes.
"I was really conflicted with myself, because I was already feeling like a bad mother, because I was hiding something so beautiful and actually so natural," Mihai said, adding that the censorship also came from her own mentality and upbringing. Because her firstborn was a daughter, she wanted to become an example that the two roles can be combined. Sode noted the contrast with men, who on announcing a partner's pregnancy simply receive congratulations and a nudge to work harder. "To get here, I needed to prove myself three times more than many of my male colleagues," Mihai said. "I killed myself with work."
From the time Mihai became a mother, her own mother traveled with her to shoots and looked after the children, until she passed away in a tragic car accident. Sode lives in Kanazawa with her husband, who travels to Tokyo often for work, while she moves to the capital alone for around six months at a time when shooting, away from her children, an arrangement she compared to a married couple running the obstacle course on 'Sasuke.' Being unable to get her first child into daycare brought her career to a complete stop and was one reason the family left Tokyo. "When I could put my child in daycare and throw myself into film work, it truly felt like I'd been let out of prison," she said.
Mihai's daughter, now almost 9, visits the set on hand-picked days and has appointed herself an unofficial assistant. Sode's children have never come to hers; Japanese sets are grueling, she said, with long hours, fast shooting schedules and tight budgets, and even if nobody objected outright, the mood would not be welcoming. She pointed to the units of Nishikawa Miwa and Kore-eda Hirokazu, which have held 'family days' inviting crew members' partners and children to visit. Mihai said the pressures are much the same in Europe: she shot the crowd-heavy 'Heysel 85' in 25 days. "It was crushing," she said, explaining that she locked down her approach early, relied on long takes and gave up some shooting days to film on 16mm for the look she wanted.
Mihai praised the Tokyo festival for working with a nanny service during the promotional stage. "You can go to your job, come back, and be a mom again," she said. Kondo said that whenever she takes on a job, she makes it a must that whatever she is in charge of is at minimum child-friendly and, when possible, has childcare, and Sode said the absence of childcare can be reason enough for a visiting guest with young children to turn down an invitation. Mihai also said she has often felt judged more harshly by women raised with an older mindset than by men, and called men her greatest mentors. "It's really not a question of men, women. It's a question of us as society and how do we function and how we were brought up," she said. Asked why budgets stay tight even as ticket prices climb, she said arthouse theaters in Europe are struggling and closing, adding: "Without state funding, we would not be making these films. It's that simple."
