Shingo Ota and Kyoko Takenaka on Numakage Public Pool

During the Thessaloniki International Film Festival, Japanese director Shingo Ota and producer Kyoko Takenaka presented their work “Numakage Public Pool,” a documentary that explores the final days of a beloved public facility in suburban Tokyo. What begins as a chronicle of a place about to disappear gradually unfolds into a layered portrait of community, memory, and the unexpected social lives that public spaces can nurture. Numakage Public Pool is screening at Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival For Ota, the project emerged from a deeply personal connection to both the location and the broader theme of loss. His career began with an intimate work about the suicide of a close friend, a musician who had left behind unfinished footage and a message asking Ota to complete it. The result was “The End of the Special Time We Were Together,” released in 2013 and screened at the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival. The experience left a lasting impression on the director, particularly in how cinema can process grief and collective memory. A decade later, another friend suggested that Ota document the closing of the Numakage Public Pool, a location in the director’s hometown that had served generations of residents. The idea immediately resonated. The pool was not merely a recreational facility but a substitute for the sea in a landlocked city. “In our hometown we don’t have a beach,” Ota explained during the conversation. “So people thought of the pool as their beach. That was where everyone enjoyed the summer.” The disappearance of such a place, he felt, could be examined through the same lens of emotional transition that informed his earlier work. Inspired by psychological studies on the stages of grief, he began shaping the narrative around how individuals confront the loss of spaces that structure everyday life. Rather than focusing solely on architecture or municipal politics, Ota approached the pool almost as if it were a living organism embedded in the memories of its users. The project soon revealed another, unexpected layer. Through conversations with locals, Ota learned that the facility had also become one of Japan’s most well-known cruising spots for gay men. The revelation surprised him. “I was very shocked,” he admitted. “I didn’t know about that history before starting the research.” Check the review of the film Numakage Public Pool (2026) by Shingo Ota Documentary Review This discovery broadened the scope of the work, transforming it into a portrait of parallel communities inhabiting the same environment. Families, swimmers, elderly residents, and LGBTQ visitors all shared the space, though often in different ways and with varying degrees of visibility. Addressing such sensitive subject matter required careful ethical consideration. Some participants wished to appear on camera but were concerned about privacy, particularly when it involved family members who might not know about their sexuality. In one instance, a man agreed to participate in the project but did not want his mother to appear on screen. Ota and his team devised a hybrid approach, recreating certain scenes with an actress while preserving the authenticity of the participant’s testimony. “We used fiction techniques only in those sequences,” the director explained. “The man himself is real, but the mother is played by an actress because the real one did not want to be filmed.” The mixture of observational documentation and staged elements reflects Ota’s broader interest in blurring boundaries between reality and narrative structure. Although grounded in real events, “Numakage Public Pool” embraces moments that feel almost surreal, such as a humorous scene involving a visitor who attempts to apply olive oil before swimming, despite the facility’s rules prohibiting such substances. Not everything captured during production was planned. At one point, while the crew was eating lunch in the changing room, the pool’s owner suddenly called them outside. An incident had occurred, where a man was frequenting the pool just to peep at people, and the owner asked Ota to record what was happening. The unexpected moment ended with police involvement, though the ultimate outcome remained unclear. “I didn’t know it would happen,” Ota recalled. “But the owner asked me to record everything for memory.” Perhaps the most emotional moment came at the end of the pool’s final season, when staff and regular visitors gathered for a closing ceremony. During a speech, the manager began to cry, overwhelmed by the significance of the occasion. Ota himself admitted that spending nearly two months at the location had created a powerful emotional bond between the crew and the people they were documenting. “We all shared the emotion,” he said. “I was crying too.” Beyond personal memories, the closure also reflects broader urban changes. Located about thirty minutes from central Tokyo, the area has become increasingly attractive to commuters seeking more affordable housing. Unlike much of Japan, where populations are shrinking due to aging demographics, this particular suburb is growing rapidly. As a result, the land occupied by the pool has been earmarked for new educational infrastructure. “The population in that city is actually increasing,” Ota noted. “So the government decided to tear down the public place for leisure and build a school.” Producer Kyoko Takenaka joined the conversation later, offering insight into the challenges of bringing the project to completion. She first encountered Ota’s work while living in Paris and was struck by how different it felt from conventional Japanese television documentaries. “When I saw his work, I thought it was very creative,” she said. “I wanted to introduce it to Europe.” Financing the production required a patchwork approach. Initial support came from a Japanese art festival, which had never previously funded a project of this scale. Additional backing followed from the Agency for Cultural Affairs, though the team still needed to launch a crowdfunding campaign to complete the budget. Takenaka also commented on the broader state of Japanese nonfiction storytelling. Many directors, she noted, remain focused on domestic television markets rather than international circulation. In recent years, however, government initiatives have begun encouraging creators to reach audiences abroad. The duo are already preparing their next project, titled “The Chimney Sweeper,” which will follow an aging craftsman carrying out what may be his final assignment after a devastating earthquake damaged traditional bathhouse chimneys in northern Japan. The new production will blend documentary observation with dramatized structure, again using real people rather than professional performers. For Ota and Takenaka, the project continues a thematic exploration that runs through their work: the fragile intersection between everyday spaces and the human lives that give them meaning. Whether it is a swimming pool, a craftsman’s trade, or a community facing transformation, their storytelling remains rooted in the quiet emotional shifts that occur when familiar worlds begin to disappear. Tags:Kyoko TakenakaNumakage Public PoolShingo OtaThessaloniki Documentary Festival