Director's statement

12 years ago, while preparing to make a new film, I felt deeply unsettled. Was I going to make a film documenting others again, while hiding myself? And if not, when it comes to expressing myself, what is considered appropriate? How could I prevent it from becoming a portrayal of my personal life?

I started roaming around looking for clues. Through the lens of the camera I began to observe the faces that had mesmerized me over the years. Their simple, wooden, almost naked, lives lay bare before me. In my imagination, I would enter their dark homes with them, trying to surmise what the bright moments in their lives that help them get through their long days are. Because I never trusted language, or perhaps simply out of shyness, I had never really bothered to find out.

Six years later, I put together my observations of other people into a film. However, that unsettling feeling did not dissipate. This is why I felt my work was unfinished.

A few years later, I felt like I was hitting rock bottom. I had never felt like this. But this is precisely when life revealed its extraordinary power. I managed to come back from the brink and gain a new lease of life. I was filled with the courage and energy I had desired for so long.

As I began working on my film again, all those questions that had plagued me before and I had never really delved into began to resurface. And my awakening came as I began to look at the signs and words of encouragement left to us by philosophers and sages of the past. I finally realised that finding the self together with the manifestation of the other could make the desire to reveal the essence of life possible.