"The whole thing is a wild ride" | Kenjo McCurtain

Looking back can open up joyously prescient insights. The film Automation, by writer / director Kenjo McCurtain, has a very human scale that makes it a deeply affecting film. Not just about the automaton robots that threaten to steal our future hearts, but the world’s very ‘now’ relationship with technology itself.

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Kenjo won Best Director at the 2017 English Riviera Film Festival for the film Automation and is co festival judge for Best Film for the 2025 ERFF Awards.

“I look at it now and it feels quite dated,” he says, citing the developments in AI, with all the intimate criticism of a filmmaker with high standards. Reader, don’t be distracted. The story picks at the emotional hope and dislocation of a lonely soul looking for connection. It feels ideal for today and echoes a relationship with tech that can turn sour. Or, at the very least, one that doesn’t manifest the promises made by those tech champions.

No substitute

“The idea was, there’s no substitute for real human interaction. The robot was always supposed to be lacking in some way,” explains Kenjo. It was an intuitive response to the modern world that struck a chord.

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“I’m delighted that they’re showing it again at the festival, and I’m really grateful. It was a big deal for me. It was my first award, and gave me the encouragement to continue making films,” he says.

Margins

Automation sets out a world of tentative human relationships and loneliness, with characters pushed to the margins who aren’t able to communicate.

As well as that world building, as a short film, Automation also allowed Kenjo to get together a cast and crew and start marking things.

Collaboration

“Networking, knowing people and building relationships, particularly in indie filmmaking, is really important,” says Kenjo, who worked with his cinematographer Keita Yugoshi on his feature Make Believers and his short The Orange of Daydreams. It’s part of the collaboration behind the camera that you come back to, he says. People that you can rely on and have confidence in on set. “Particularly on the first day,” says Kenjo, ”because that can be absolutely terrifying.”

Other people

Make Believers, Kenjo’s musical feature. It’s a story about a lonely, introverted manga writer, living in Tokyo. He’s estranged from his father, who he learns is dying. To please his father before he dies, he hires a rental actress to pose as his fiancée. The musical element comes from her being a dancer, that being what she wants to do with her life. But her current vocation is having to be there for other people.

Make Believers was completed in 2019, just in time for the pandemic to skupper plans for a theatrical release at the time. But the film did achieve the holy grail for indie filmmakers and had a theatre run in Tokyo. He’s now looking at other routes to distribution.

Also waiting to the seen is the very nearly completed short The Orange of Daydreams.

Cat killings

The story follows a colour blind, lonely young female in her 20s. She is a cat lover, and she lives in an area where there are a lot of stray cats. When a spate of cat killings take place in her neighbourhood, she fancies herself as a would-be detective and goes tries to find the killer. In the process, she falls in love with a hacker who she hires to help her on her journey.

The film starts off in black and white and gradually turns to colour. It’s an idea Kenjo picked up from Park Chan-wook, who wanted to try it for 2002’s Sympathy for Mr Vengeance.

“Hopefully, it’s going to be in festivals next year,” says Kenjo. “It’s unlike anything I’ve done, and I’m really excited for it.”

Resilience

With that combo of creativity, resilience, and energy, Kenjo’s advice for filmmakers is fairly straightforward.

“There’s one answer for filmmakers who are coming into it blind and just have ideas and ambition; and then there’s an answer for those who are already making film. But what is relevant to both parties would be to not give up,” says Kenjo.

Perseverance

“Perseverance is an underrated attribute. It’s not going to come quickly, it’s not going to come easily. It’s all about not feeling let down by others, not feeling let down by yourself, and trying to retain the sparks of creativity and ambition, and remembering what you love about filmmaking.”

And what is it that Kenjo still loves about filmmaking?

“It’s an intuitive thing,” he says. “The feeling that you get when you watch a great film. If you have good enough ideas and you believe in them, and then you can impart the same feeling onto others. The whole thing is a wild ride – it’s a massive dopamine hit. It takes so much of yourself and all your facilities to make a film happen, and then have it reach others – there’s nothing like it.”

The ERFF is showing Automation, along with the trailer for Make Believers, at the next Projection room event on 18 December. Book your space.