talks and conversations with various artists in the japanese film & tv industry. the first part compiles various conversations between koreeda and directors. i had high expectations for his talks with jia zhangke, spike jonze, atom egoyan, and michel gondry, but due to the language barrier, the discussions never dive deep into detail about filmmaking.
the next section, compiling conversations with actors, is even more disappointing. lili franky comes off as a jackass, and the event with iseya yuusuke was simply a promotion for his directorial debut which no one remember, with koreeda barely saying anything but a handful of comments about producing it. however, his conversation with juliette binoche is the best part of the whole book and probably worth the price of admission alone.
the final section covers discussions with TV screenwriters (none of whom i recognize) is surprisingly very interesting. without any language barriers, koreeda is able to get into the nitty gritty about the process of writing scripts and scenarios with veterans of the japanese TV drama industry.