TITANIC OCEAN
Titanic Ocean, as seen by Konstantina Kotzamani
For her first feature film, Konstantina Kotzamani, the Greek director, chooses a highly original setting: a Japanese boarding school where young teenage girls are trained to become professional mermaids. Using this passion, 17-year-old Akame truly becomes a woman as the film follows her seemingly authentic metamorphosis. Interview with the director of Titanic Ocean, presented at Un Certain Regard.
How did this project come about?
For me, making a film is never just a creative act. It is a difficult but necessary process of healing and transformation. In Titanic Ocean, the core of this process was an unresolved fear. Everything began when I discovered professional mermaid schools. I came across a photo of five young Japanese girls training under colourful silicone mermaid tails. I became obsessed with the image.
Since childhood, I had been haunted by a dream: a massive wave, inevitable and overwhelming, crashing over everything. This is how I found the core of my heroine Akame: a quiet, mermaid trainee who is strangely afraid of the real ocean, but who awakens to true love and finally follows an inner path toward fulfilment and freedom, against all currents. For me as well, making this film became a symbolic necessity: to face the wave and transform it. Not into destruction, but into creation and feminine force.
What was the atmosphere on set?
It was very challenging to work with crews from five different European countries on a large Japanese set; at times, it felt like a Babel of cultural gaps.
If I had to share one anecdote, it would be from the last day of shooting. We were in the open ocean, and at the very last moment, the sun was going down, everyone was exhausted and freezing, the stunt performers were cold, and we were about to lose the shot. So, I put on the mermaid tail and went into the waves myself.
A few words about your cast?
When I write a script, I already have a very precise perception of the actors’ presence in the final image. For Akame, the main actress portrayed by Arisa Sasaki, I was looking for something very specific. A fragile yet powerful, almost witch-like siren gaze. I saw over 500 young actresses before finding these remarkable faces. What was truly challenging, and also beautiful – was how to communicate artistically with them. Not through commands or direction in the traditional sense, but beyond words: through connection, a kind of spiritual closeness, deep trust, emotion, instinct, and the body. Watching the film today, what makes me most proud is this cast is how they managed to surpass themselves, their doubts, even cultural boundaries. After the film, Arisa left Japan, chose to learn a new language, and moved to Australia to study oceanology. The film became a transformative experience for her as well.”
What did you learn or discover while making this film?
Shooting in Japan, within a culture so different from my own, I often felt the weight of traditional hierarchies and gender expectations. There were moments when my presence was questioned, when I had to constantly reaffirm my authority, and when sensitivity was mistaken for fragility. This experience sharpened my understanding of the film I was making.
Looking back now, I realize that this entire process resonated strongly with Akame’s journey: finding one’s voice within a system, while not losing the connection to a more instinctive, creative, almost magical inner world.
What would you like the audience to take away from your film?
I’d like the audience to be drawn in by the film’s seductive surface, almost like a mermaid’s call, but ultimately come away reflecting on the deeper themes it explores. Titanic Ocean begins in a shimmering, pop-infused world, where dreams of youth, fantasy, friendship, and sexual desire awaken. But this is only the threshold.
Within every woman, there is the voice of a siren that makes her sing freely, feel her heart beat deeply, and live wholeheartedly. This is the voice I want to bring to the audience: strong, intuitive, unstoppable.
