De toutes les nuits, les amants © 2026 Bitters End
All the Lovers in the Night, as seen by Yukiko Sode
For her first selection in Cannes, Yukiko Sode presents her fourth feature film, All the Lovers in the Night, an adaptation of Mieko Kawakami’s novel. The film is running for the Un Certain Regard Prize. Through the portrait of Fuyuko, a lone proofreader, the japanese director draws a love story enbedded with questions about light, the invisible and emotions. Meeting with a director in search of nuances.
How did this project come about?
Producer Kubota at C&I Entertainment approached me about adapting this novel for the screen. I had read many of Mieko Kawakami’s works, but All the Lovers in the Night was one I hadn’t yet gotten to — so I read it immediately, and knew at once that I wanted to be the one to bring it to film.
What was the atmosphere on set? Any anecdotes you’d like to share?
An exceptional team came together, and I felt that every department was leaning into the story with genuine enthusiasm. The story of “light,” the act of “quoting” another’s expression, the idea of breaking from correct grammar to forge something entirely your own — all the motifs woven throughout the narrative were deeply cinematic and richly worth expressing.
Beyond that, shooting on 16mm film further heightened the focus on set and the sheer joy of filmmaking. To capture “light” — the film’s central motif — on film itself was a deeply fulfilling experience.
A few words about your cast?
Yukino Kishii has a remarkable openness. She placed the anxiety, the joy, the confusion her character felt directly in front of the camera, without filtering any of it. To be that open takes courage. As her director, I always felt the responsibility to meet that courage — to create an environment where she could offer her performance with a sense of safety.
Tadanobu Asano is a tremendously accomplished actor with an enormous body of work, and yet in this film he brought none of that veteran weight to the screen. He stood before the camera with a freshness that was genuinely surprising. I have heard there was a period of searching before he found his way into the role, but once on set, there was no hesitation in his performance — and never anything excessive. He simply existed as though he had been born as that character. Every scene, he surprised me.
What did you learn or discover while making this film?
For a filmmaker, it goes without saying that light becomes perceptible only when there is something to receive it. But the absence of a receiving surface does not mean the light itself is absent. Something that cannot be seen, and yet may be there. During the shoot, I felt as though I was constantly searching for that — trying, somehow, to give it form.
What would you like the audience to take away from your film?
This is a quiet love story, but also a portrait of the contradictions and paradoxes inherent in being human. The sense that “only I can see this quality in you,” “you are unlike anyone else in the world,” “this love is irreplaceable” — those feelings of particularity blur and dissolve within the universality of romantic norms and definitions of happiness. I believe many people have felt that paradox between the particular and
Can you tell us about your next project?
I’ve been drawn to Purity and Danger by the cultural anthropologist Mary Douglas, and I’ve been thinking about how the motifs explored in that work might be shaped into a narrative.
