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Trying to figure out who you are can be a complex process. It gets even more complicated when identity politics prevents you from fully assimilating into the culture you were born into. It’s a frustration that Japanese Brazilian filmmaker André Saito knows all too well, despite being a second-generation Japanese Brazilian, in a country that contains the world’s largest Japanese population outside of Japan. Feeling compelled to channel his decades-long hurt and anger stemming from experiencing racial microaggressions in his home country due to his Japanese ancestry, Saito made his latest short film, Amarela, a term that means “yellow” in Portuguese.
Set against the backdrop of the 1998 São Paulo World Cup between Brazil and France, Amarela follows 14-year-old Erika Oguihara (Melissa Uehara), a Japanese Brazilian sports fanatic who rebels against her family’s more Japanese cultural traditions. When Erika desires to celebrate with other fans in the city, tensions build during the match, and Erika becomes a target for misplaced hatred when the game takes a turn for the worse.
In addition to landing the 2026 Oscars shortlist, the 15-minute film also got nominations from the Cannes Film Festival, Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival, Palm Springs International Short Fest and TIFF. It also won the Canal Brazil Award for Short Films at the São Paulo International Short Film Festival.
Below, Saito opens up to Deadline about the importance of maintaining pride while also investigating the complex duality of racial politics.
DEADLINE: As a Japanese Brazilian yourself, how much of this story is you?
ANDRÉ SAITO: In 1998, I was 14 years old. I was a soccer fanatic, and I was really excited for the finale because it was Brazil and France, and it was a national tragedy [France won 3-0]. But four years earlier, it was unforgettable when Brazil won the championship for the fourth time. In 1998, Brazil had a great team; everyone was united and screaming in unison, yet we still ended up losing to France. It was tragic and traumatic in the moment because I was heartbroken. But at the same time, I was always struggling to belong and used soccer as an unconscious tool to connect with the national Brazilian identity and culture outside my house. [As a person of Japanese descent], I was always affirmed and seen as a foreigner, as someone exotic, different, weird, not normal, non-white.
DEADLINE: When did you figure out that you wanted to be a filmmaker to tell your stories about occupying this unique space?
SAITO: My brother and my dad are engineers. My dad expected to have another engineer in his family [laughs]. I feel that if I had followed the traditions at home, I would be an engineer. But when I was studying communications, I did a short film. It was really immature, of course, and I was 17. I really liked how I could portray my feelings that I used to contain, or rather, suffocate. Eventually, I felt that the camera could be a tool for connecting with other human beings heart to heart, and I also realized that I could express my deepest secrets. [I felt my best] when I worked with a famous actor here in Brazil on a short film. When he was acting in a difficult scene, he delivered a beautiful take, and I was really amazed by it. I couldn’t believe I wrote and directed this guy, and that an actor [of this caliber] incorporated my direction and writing into his performance. That encouraged me to do many other films, internships, music videos, advertising, documentaries and then my shorts.
But years ago, when I went to Japan for the first time, it was really powerful to connect with our ancestors. We met some of our family there in Japan and realized how Brazilian we are. Then I started to really investigate my roots and origins. I started to make peace with this identity that I have, and that I denied for more than 30 years of my life, being Japanese Brazilian. I always wanted to be considered and affirmed as Brazilian, but as my phenotype tells, it was never like that. It’s so weird to feel like a foreigner in my own country, but I feel that cinema and filmmaking brought a lot of healing, a lot of strong connections, and a lot of processing with my family, so I could expunge my pain and portray the beauties of being in the [world].
DEADLINE: There’s a lot of ways to tackle otherness and discrimination. Was Amarela always going to revolve around sports, or did you think of other ways to talk about this?
SAITO: I decided on football because I was a fanatic, because when the World Cup is here in Brazil, everybody gets crazy, so there’s a collective euphoria. And I thought euphoria would be a very good background to parallel the inner conflict and identity crisis this girl has. She wants and desires to be Brazilian and to cheer [with other people, her classmates, other young people her age], but at the same time, everybody around her is excluding her from this sense of belonging that comes with an event like that. Also, there’s a fake patriotism going on because we have this huge event, and sports [culture] also contains a lot of [discrimination]. I thought this would be a good way also to add that this young girl, who does not have the standard [conventional] look, so she experiences xenophobia, sexism and the other discriminations that Asian Brazilians and children of immigrants face.
DEADLINE: The handheld camera style is very engaging. Can you talk about why you directed it that way?
SAITO: We wanted the camera very close to the character so we could feel how suffocated Erika feels. I was always trying to make beautiful mistakes with the camera by not framing perfectly or not being too descriptive. I was always saying to the DoP [Hélcio Alemão Nagamine], “Let’s make more mistakes. Let’s get a bit delayed. Let’s shake the camera.” For example, the last scene is an almost four-minute-long take. I told the DoP, “Just feel her, and whenever you feel, you go to the [food she’s making] and don’t go back to her face. Let’s just see where she is.” [After experiencing an incident], she ends up being alone in the kitchen, where she’s expected to be cooking and serving. There are many layers of sadness, and it’s tragic for her because Brazil lost the game, but she’s also crying for many other reasons [related to the frustrations of life]. In that scene, we were always trying not to be so descriptive and to be more sensorial.
DEADLINE: What does it mean to have landed the 2026 Oscars shortlist, and what would you like people to take away from the film?
SAITO: It’s been really crazy and surreal because before this, the film was selected for more than 100 festivals in 35 countries. We made a lot of exhibitions in schools, including one at Soka University of America in California, a place I studied and where I suffered a lot of discrimination. So, I am excited to have made it this far, and I feel a sense of responsibility for representing many people in Brazil and around the world.
As for the film’s message, I think a lot of it is about identity, belonging, feeling, and opening space for our feelings to arise. It’s about acceptance, respect and empathy. I think the film challenges us about how we have so many stereotyped nationalities. It’s a statement about diversity, respecting our own individualities, and opening our minds to [not wrongly perceiving other people], because empathy is important.
[This interview has been edited for length and clarity]
English (US) ·