Daniel Costa Neves

Jyowa is a made-up word created by Yukimura Sensei which merges the characters for “rope” and for “speaking or communicating”, hence it can be translated as “communicating through ropes” or “rope stories”. This project was started in Tokyo in 2011 as a documentary film, yet it ended up becoming more of an aesthetic experience that takes the viewer into the unique universe of five of Japan’s top rope artists (by order of appearance): Naka Akira, Yukimura Haruki, Nawashi Kanna, Urado Hiroshi and Hajime Kinoko. In each of the the five chapters we can see two people taking a journey into a deep and profound level of communication in which rope takes a very special place.

"In the beginning of this project, I wanted to do a documentary film based on this book by Luiz Ruffato. However, I ended up doing a feature film with many links to documentary. I wanted to know what made Brazilians want to emigrate to Portugal. I chose working with amateur actors and non-actors in both cities, so their own life stories and experiences could be in the film. I did the other way round from the writer. He found these people and made them characters of his book. I looked for people who had similar stories to those described in the book, and made them characters of my film. When I read the book, I was seduced by its "false documentary" characteristic. The book was all written as if it was the transcription of an oral interview the writer had done in Lisbon. I decided to keep this narrative in the film, by a narration with the main character talking to the camera. It's a film about emigration. About dreams and disappointments," says Barahona