Synopsis
Ordinary life repeats itself every day. The succession of moments that we repeat over and over again is never the same, and everything changes and wavers. The moment we touch something, our consciousness can go to a place that does not exist anywhere in the past, nor in the future. In an uncertain and fluctuating world, only the feeling of the body touching something, which exists only in this present reality, can be recognized as “now”. That moment is lovely.

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We would like to share with you an insightful interview with Yoriko Mizushiri on her latest film, Ordinary Life, a particularly impressive and memorable film among the nominees for the International Competition at ITFS 2025.

Yoriko Mizushiri is famous for her award-winning non-narrative animated short films that uniquely and delicately animate the texture of flesh and matter, featuring simple visual design and pale color palettes that further accentuate and sharpen her sensitive visual expressions, such as Futon (2012) and Anxious Body (2021). Ordinary Life has already won the Silver Bear for Best Short Film at the 75th Berlin International Film Festival.

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Interview with Yoriko Mizushiri

Hideki Nagaishi (HN): Where did the initial idea of the film come from?

Yoriko Mizushiri: My previous animated short film Anxious Body was an animation where images blend together through repeated tactile movements. This time, I wanted to make a film with an evolved same style of animation. I aimed to develop a film that would allow me – the creator – and the audience to both feel the pleasure of the sensation felt on the skin through the animation.

HN: How did you go from the initial idea of the film to creating all the scenes and then integrating and configuring them into a film?

Yoriko Mizushiri: At first, I had several fragmentary animation movements that I wanted to depict. Like deriving from them, I generated as many ideas as I could think of. Then, I assembled a video storyboard with them in a sensory way and developed the whole film structure by arranging the images within a time frame.

HN: What did you most want to portray or deliver to the audience through the film?

Yoriko Mizushiri: What is ‘ordinary,’ which is in the title of the film, varies from person to person, but our daily life usually repeats in the same way. And I wanted to express the tactile comforts and the strangeness of the peculiar transformation of ‘ordinary’ within that repetition. So, in the film, I connect “the image of consciousness going back and forth between the future and the past” and “the image of the feeling of ‘now’ that can be felt with our skin” on the same time axis.

HN: What did you take care in the most among the whole visual expression of this film?

Yoriko Mizushiri: Unlike in my previous works, this film features a person who clearly wears clothes and shoes, which made it challenging to draw with simple visuals. I took great care and was particular about drawing movements that were both sensually pleasant and interesting. However, I think I might not animate clothed people again.

HN: We come across a number of impressive visual representations of comfortable elasticity of materials in the film that bring our brains very real skin sensations. What is the meaning or significance or value of that kind of skin sensation in “ordinary life” for you?

Yoriko Mizushiri: I like the presence of a sense of “something that just communicates” in a film, even if it is with or without a story, meaning, or message. Because I think that feeling from a film is proof that we are living with a body that has senses.

I think that “being conveyed to the audience in a way that stimulates their physical senses” is more valuable than “the audience feeling the presence of a meaning or message of the film” from a tactile animation created through my body. It feels like a confirmation that we live with a sense of touch.

HN: Could you please let us know the story behind the music of the film?

Yoriko Mizushiri: I wanted to express with music a kind of madness slowly creeping out of the silence and the strange feeling of having arrived in an unknown place without realizing it

So, I requested a sound to go with movements that seemed to break away from a slow, consistent rhythm and gradually built up the animation and the sound.

Also, I had the composer use a sample of my grandmother’s voice that happened to be on my iPhone, adding my voice to create a sound like a back-and-forth nodding agreement – we enjoyed doing these kinds of sudden experiments together.