Writing Across Cultures; Ryan Davies on his Japanese Short Film, Tetra
Moving to another country is one thing, but writing and directing a short film in a different language is a challenge beyond measure. In March 2026, Ryan Davies (originally from Rochdale, UK) made the daunting decision to relocate from Cypress to Nagoya, Japan. Five months on, he has a brand new short film in his portfolio, performed in a language he doesn’t speak. This week, I sat down with Ryan to discuss the production processes behind crafting cross-cultural amateur cinema.
C: The short film stems from an English script which was translated into Japanese by the cast on set. What was that process like as a writer, and what challenges arose from producing a film across cultural barriers?
R: It was daunting at first but I was lucky enough to coincidentally hire cast and crew members with strong English skills. There isn’t a ton of dialogue in the film, which was a choice I made with the language barrier in mind, but there were still points in the day where we had to stop filming and go over some dialogue to make sure we got the correct Japanese way of saying it; the words you use in Japanese can and will change depending on the situation and the status of the people speaking or listening, which is still something I struggle with.
We also had to contend with some other cultural differences; for example, the protagonist pulls out a knife in one scene that takes place outside, which we filmed by the fountain in Noritake Garden. In the UK, nobody would care that you’re holding a knife as long as it’s obvious that you’re surrounded by a film crew and working on a project. I confirmed with the Japanese crew members that it would be a bad idea to do this in Japan no matter what, so any shots where the knife is visible were filmed on my apartment’s balcony using particular camera angles that allowed me to splice all the shots together without it being apparent that we’d changed location.
C: Due to the adaptable and versatile nature of the script, how collaborative was the filming process?
R: It was 100% collaborative, which I think makes for the best shoots. I’ve worked on films where ideas are shot down by the director immediately, and it’s efficient but not very fun. I prefer to hear any ideas that people come up with on the day, film them if we have time, and then decide whether those ideas survive while I’m editing the footage later on.
I also had to get creative due to the lack of a budget; I asked Tojo Fukada, a Japanese friend of mine who lives in Nagano, to send me audio recordings of himself saying accusatory dialogue in a threatening tone and reading out disjointed pieces of a news story in a “newsreader” voice. I then edited the audio, which became the voice on the other end of a phone call with the protagonist and a looping news story on a TV showing only static that the protagonist can’t turn off.
C: The film is only 5 minutes long. What elements or messages were most important to convey in this timespan?
R: The main themes are nightmares, guilt, the experiences of Japanese women, and tetraphobia (the East Asian superstition equating the number four with bad luck, which gave the film its title). I wanted it to be four minutes long to stick with the theme of four, but it couldn’t be cut down to that length without losing a lot of stuff that deserved to be in there.
C: How was the script influenced by Japanese culture, and what specific elements of Japan and Nagoya can be found within?
R: The script began as a challenge to see if I could faithfully write a film that couldn’t be anything but Japanese. I knew I’d succeeded when the lead actress, Hana Haruhi, sent me a few paragraphs detailing what she really liked after she read it for the first time; she even related to it so much that she offered to do it for free, but I think people should always be paid for their time and hard work.
I found out shortly before filming began that Nagoya has a reputation for being the home of surrealist art and media in Japan, which was a happy coincidence but didn’t really inform the film itself. It also turned out that Hana, who came from Tokyo for the shoot, is originally from Nagoya. I think a different Japanese actress may not have taken to the nightmarish tone and surrealist elements as easily.
C: The film has received positive feedback from film festivals in Tokyo. What does the film’s lifespan look like and what are your goals for it’s future?
R: There was never really an end goal. The film was an exercise to shake the rust off after a few years of not making any films, a challenge to see how feasible it is to make a Japanese film while still in the very early stages of actually learning Japanese, and a practice run for my next short film. I shot it on my phone with no budget and had no plans to submit it to any festivals until Hana suggested it.
C: What further projects are you working on?
R: My next short film is a supernatural horror about a double date between two couples in Japan that goes horribly wrong. I’ve pencilled it in for October so I have enough time to get a proper budget together and maybe get a Halloween release date.
Interview conducted for Wingspan, Issue 1: New Wings
© Ryan Davies
Tetra
Running Time: 5 minutes
Genre: Surrealist, Horror, Mystery
A woman must face dark secrets from her
past in order to escape from a sinister time loop.
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