Maha Harada wrote fiction for two decades before directing a single scene. At 64, the best-selling Japanese novelist now competes for the Golden Shell at San Sebastian with her first feature, “In My Father’s Room,” which heads to the Busan International Film Festival next.
The drama adapts Harada’s own short story “An Unnecessary Man.” Yu Aoi plays Satomi, an art museum employee who receives an envelope holding an unfamiliar key. It opens a room left by her father, who died alone a month earlier. Retracing his final days, Satomi meets a man society had written off, yet one who found comfort in language, tea ceremony and small, overlooked beauty. Issey Ogata plays the father, Yuichi.
Harada told Variety that the shift from page to set demanded surrender. Her assistant director asked whether the script carried too many stage directions, and she realized a novel consists almost entirely of them, with the author steering every detail. She trimmed the text, then cut again on set, until little dialogue remained. Aoi filled the space. In one scene, Satomi comes home jobless and leaves a tap running, and Harada says she sometimes forgot to call “cut” while watching. Harada says of the experience, “If this is a dream, I hope I never wake up.”
She and cinematographer Yoshio Kitagawa, known for “Evil Does Not Exist,” built the film’s look through visits to tea ceremonies and museum viewings of Rothko’s paintings. Harada names Yasujiro Ozu and Victor Erice’s “The Spirit of the Beehive” as tonal guides.
The debut carries commercial weight. Harada has sold over 10 million books since 2006, including the art-themed novels “Canvas of Paradise” and “Guernica Cover-Up.” She trained in Japanese literature and art history and worked at museums, among them New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Still, she calls reaching audiences outside Japan the hardest part of her career, though readers in South Korea, China and Taiwan have found her books.
Sales agent Bitters End has sold the film to France, Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong ahead of the premiere, with more territories in talks. The company also handles the Japanese release, set for January 2027.
Mike Leigh, Pablo Larrain and Fatih Akin also have films in the 74th edition, which runs September 18-26. Festival previews singled out Harada among the new directors to watch. In a March social media post, she wrote that she hopes the film reaches many people, arguing a quiet voice can move audiences more deeply than a loud one.
