Vancouver filmmaker's feature film debut wins big at Toronto International Film Festival

Vancouver actress and filmmaker Meredith Hama-Brown is making her feature film directorial debut with the award-winning Seagrass.

The film recently won the International Film Critic's Award at the Toronto International Film Festival and will be shown at the Vancouver International Film Festival, which runs from Sept. 28 to Oct. 8. 

Hama-Brown's film follows a Japanese-Canadian woman still reeling from the death of her mother. The woman, Judith, takes her family on a retreat, where her relationship with her husband unravels. 

While the story is fictitious, Hama-Brown said the themes are inspired by her own experience and heritage as a Japanese-Canadian.

She shared more about the film with North by Northwest host Margaret Gallagher. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Where does the title Seagrass come from? 

It actually comes from a deleted scene. In the scene, the two sisters are talking about their relationship to fear. The eldest one is saying how she used to be afraid of seagrass because she was always afraid something was going to come out of the seagrass and grab her ankle. We ended up getting rid of the scene because we didn't need it, but the title just stuck. And I think it was a really great symbolic title for the film to have. 

The film centres around a family. Tell me about them.

They're in transition. Everything is kind of in flux in their life. The mother, Judith, has recently lost her own mother and it's created a rift in her marriage. She takes her family, her husband and two daughters to this retreat. All of them are going through this encounter with grief and feeling a sense of isolation from one another. 

Why did you set it on an island?

I think that there's just something so interesting about them having to go across this stretch of water and there's something symbolic to me about an island where they're isolated, they can't escape, and also they're surrounded by water. 

You are of mixed heritage. How much of your personal experience came into that film?

A fair amount. Most of the film is fictional, but it comes from a personal place in terms of its themes. My dad is very different from Steve in the film, and we never went to a retreat quite like this altogether. But other themes are more personal, such as my family heritage; like the characters in the film, I'm Japanese-Canadian as well, and so that was something that I wanted to discuss in the film.

The film is set in the mid-90s. I was a mixed kid growing up in the '70s and '80s. I don't remember ever seeing myself on screen, whether in the terms of the way I looked or even sharing some of that experience of what it is like to be in an intersection of cultures. 

I think we see more people of mixed heritage on screen, but I haven't really seen a lot of films that discuss that feeling in quite the same way and especially the Japanese-Canadian identity. Judith, the mother, is definitely feeling a sense of separation from her own Japanese-Canadian identity as well, so there's that component that I haven't really seen much in films either. 

There's the trauma of course, of the passing of the grandmother, but there is also that underlying trauma of the experience that Judith's family went through in the Japanese Canadian internment. 

There are two levels of grief that Judith is experiencing. She's lost her mother, but she's also lost perhaps her last connection to a bunch of questions that she will never have answers to and also to maybe the last connection that she may have to her Japanese-Canadian heritage and culture as well. I think it's quite a common experience for Japanese Canadians to lose touch with that side of their identity. I think the incarceration created a lot of shame and pain and trauma within the Japanese-Canadian community. It really shut off a lot of that communication between my grandparent's generation and my mother's generation. Judith is, you know, someone in my mother's generation who has now lost her mother and it's just gone now for her. 

Did you relate to any characters?

I really do relate to the two daughters, as well as Judith, because in order to write their characters, I had to kind of find my own personal connection with them. I am a younger sister in my own family. That being said, I really had to get into Stephanie's mind and a lot of her experiences I've experienced as well. 

I love the relationship between the two sisters, and they're just little things that you do that send so many messages. Even the older sister not wanting to drink her milk and, of course, who's going to sacrifice herself, but the younger sister, and that sets up so much about the power dynamics in the family as well. 

I think that was one of the initial things that I wanted to explore when I started writing this film was a sibling relationship that is very complex and rich and profound. With a lot of our connections in our immediate family, that's often the case. There are these really kind of intense and powerful dynamics that are in our life. There was definitely a power dynamic that I wanted to explore. But also that sense of protection and love that they also have. 

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The film deals with the tensions that come from the intersections of culture in such subtle ways, including different responses to racism. Each of the primary female characters experience it in different ways and the response is so specific to that person.

I think that especially because this is set in the '90s, there's a lot of racism that takes place that I think we all grew up experiencing, but we didn't really have the language around it. And now there's a little bit more discussion around what micro-aggressions are or those things that we may have experienced that we didn't really necessarily know how to verbalize as a culture. I mean maybe some people did, but as a kid I didn't have that language or even the means to know that that was racism that I was experiencing. 

In terms of the interracial dynamic, and also Pat's relationship to his Asian heritage versus Judith, I wanted to see that difference and highlight that difference. I think that what I'm really looking at in the film is something that is very specific to Japanese-Canadians and Americans and to show Pat, who's Chinese-Australian, he has a different relationship to his Asian heritage, and I really wanted to highlight kind of that difference between them. 

This is your first feature. You've won this huge recognition. How does that feel? 

Shocking, really great. I think going into releasing a debut feature to festivals and everything that will come afterwards is just a huge question mark. Will anyone see it, will anyone understand it, will anyone like it? To win the prize was a huge surprise. 

What's next for you?

I'm starting to write my next feature, it's very rough. I'm excited to look at some similar themes, and also take a big leap in other directions as well.