Oh, to be an artist who’s lost the will to create! What trials the creative process can be when you possess more passion than you do money.
In his latest film (well at the time of writing this anyway) I Fell In Love with a Z Grade Director in Brooklyn, which had its world premiere at the 2025 Fantasia International Film Festival in competition in the Cheval Noir program, writer and director Kenichi Ugana takes his characters, Jack (Estevan Muñoz) a passionate young Native Brooklynite rookie filmmaker who believes he’s on the cusp of greatness, his very small and intrepid film crew, and famous Japanese actress Shina, played by Ui Mihara (We Were Aliens, Hide From the Rain), who’s lost her zeal for acting and wallet, on a chaotic journey through New York city streets and the slightly unhinged process of making a horror film with no budget.
Similarly to his previous film, 2024’s The Gesuidouz, I Fell In Love with a Z Grade Director in Brooklyn, provides a behind the scenes look into what the unpredictable, chaotic, and emotionally exhausting journey artists fully committed to their process is like. But unlike The Gesquidouz which is about a punk rock band now finding their path to stardom in Japan, I Fell In Love with a Z Grade Director in Brooklyn, centres around Shina, a young woman a veteran to the entertainment industry in her mid-twenties who having begun her career as a baby has spent more time in the spotlight than most performers decades older.
Becoming disillusioned with the film world, people’s lack of interest in her as an actress and perhaps feeling underestimated, she walks out of an interview with a journalist who hasn’t seen her film, quits her agency, and makes the spontaneous decision to head to New York with her boyfriend Ren (Katsunari Nakagawa).
Once in The Big Apple, Shina decides to take a walk along the Brooklyn Bridge because that’s the thing to do to truly feel the drama of the moment. When they stop to take a break, Ren asks her exactly what the plan is. Where does she intend to go, and more specifically where does she see their relationship going and what he is to her. When she can’t give a proper answer, Ren comes to the conclusion that the same way Shina feels unappreciated as an actress, he feels unappreciated by her and breaks up with her on the spot. It’s only after she’s spent some time lost in thought trying to figure out exactly what happened, that Shina realises she has no phone, money, or her passport because she had given them to Ren to hold and he had unintentionally walked off with them.
Alone, confused, perhaps heartbroken but definitely broke, and with no way to contact or communicate with anyone, Shina wanders through the night along the unfamiliar streets till she ends up at a bar decorated in punk rock paraphernalia. After a humorous exchange filled with miscommunication and misconceptions with the owner and patrons, She leaves and ends up having a comically sad drunken breakdown in the middle of the sidewalk, and here enters Jack.
Rather than being an altruistic chivalrous saviour determined to help this damsel in clear distress, Jack sees Shina’s emotional display as a sign of her theatrical star potential and future lead of his ghost love story. Through gesticulations and awkward use of a translation app Jak invites Shina back to his apartment for rest and a change of clothes. Somehow they come to an agreement for Shina to star in his ultra low budget horror about an unrelenting ghost haunting her former boyfriend, and thus begins Shina’s funny, endearing and inspiring foray into the American indie film world.
With the long-suffering help of Jack’s crew comprised of sound engineer Cassio (Madeline Barbush), cinematographer TJ (Lisa Carangdan-Sweeny), production assistant Ricky (Jordan Dallam), and lead actor Chip (Stephen Solomon), they stumble their way along despite multiple production setbacks, Jack’s own emotional breakdowns filled with verbose exclamations of his passion for the art of filmmaking and storytelling, and the occasional visit to the aforementioned bar. With each shaky step of progress Shina’s love for acting and self-confidence are gradually reawakened.
One of Ugana’s strong suits as a filmmaker is getting his performers to shine as brightly as they can not with grandiose monologues filled with overly complicated dialogue and sweeping soundscapes, but with the simplest backdrops, giving the actors the space to simply have fun, embrace the moment and trust the process, and that comes through in I Fell in Love with a Z Grade Director in Brooklyn with both Estevan and Ui.
Estevan clearly revelled at embracing the heightened emotions of Jack’s enthusiasm and blossoming feelings for Shina, and Ui’s own experience as a non-English speaker provided the authenticity needed to make Shina’s revelations that acting can be fun and rewarding even amidst her charming fish-out-of-water bewilderment caused by the language barrier and new environment, that perhaps an actor fluent in English may not have had.
Utilizing a similar guerilla style filmmaking to what Jack does within the film, Ugana’s directing methods offers a sense of levity that allows the film to be both comical with the more absurd scenes such as when Ui’s ghost haunts Chip, the beleaguered object of her obsession, and serious when addressing topics such as Shina questioning where her life is headed. and Jack’s moments of insecurity and doubt at becoming successful at the craft he dedicates so much to.
Ugana himself clearly had a blast making what could be called an a-typical New York love story but still pays homage to many of the hallmarks of the genre such as the grand dramatic declarations of love in a sunny park–which hilariously culminates in probably one of the bloodiest fake blood single take scenes in recent film history–while staying true to his Japanese horror film roots and inspirations. There are references to classics like The Grudge (2004), and I’m pretty sure One Cut of the Dead, the 2017 mockumentary by Shin’ichirô Ueda which also utilizes the ‘film within a film’ narrative style, and his own personal love of punk music.
In my interview with Ugana and Ui, who won the Outstanding Performance Award at Fantasia, we discussed the film being a discussion on what, falling out of love with your passion, how Ui’s own real life career almost mirrors Shina’s, and language barriers being an inspiration rather than a hindrance to the creative process.
Interpretation for the interview was conducted by Alexe Frédéric Migneault.
Carolyn Hinds
Freelance Film Critic, Journalist, Podcaster & YouTuber
African American Film Critics Association Member, Tomatometer-Approved Critic
Host & Producer Carolyn Talks…, and So Here’s What Happened! Podcast
Bylines at Authory.com/CarolynHinds
Twitter & Instagram: @CarrieCnh12
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