He hadn't planned to film in Tokyo. Nor to film Romain Duris speaking Japanese. Yet that’s what director Guillaume Senez did with the heartbreaking “A Missing Part,” in theaters this Wednesday. This poignant and delicate drama tells the wanderings of a Frenchman who desperately searches Tokyo for his daughter, kidnapped nine years earlier by her mother, a Japanese woman. And which comes up against passive justice.
In 2018, the director went to present his previous film, the sublime “Nos Batailles” (with Duris, already), in the land of the rising Sun. There, “by chance”, he heard about these men or women who, after a marital breakdown, no longer had any connection with their child because, in Japan, the rule is sole custody of one of the two. parents. Stunned and overwhelmed, Guillaume Senez and Romain Duris decided to make it the theme of their next feature film.
“Romain has dreamed of filming in Japan for a long time, of which he is a big fan,” explains the filmmaker. For me, there was a continuity between this subject and Nos Batailles (which features a father whose wife leaves home without leaving an address). » Senez found that 150,000 children lose contact with one of their parents each year. He met with lawyers and concerned fathers and mothers.
Among them, Vincent Fichot. This 42-year-old Frenchman lived in Japan for sixteen years, where he was a trader and married to a Japanese woman. On August 10, 2018, when he returned from work, his wife had emptied the house and left with their son Tsubasa, 3, and daughter Kaede, 11 months. Since then, he has had no news from his children. He has initiated numerous legal actions in Japan, launched procedures with the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Interpol, the UN, and carried out a hunger strike in July 2021 during the Tokyo Olympics. In vain.
The same “incomprehension”, the same pain
When Guillaume Senez spoke to him about his project, the former financier saw it as an opportunity to have his fight recognized and advance his cause. For six years, Vincent Fichot has “lost everything, or rather given everything”. He spent almost 300,000 euros on private detectives and lawyers' fees. A year and a half ago, he was forced to divorce, which resulted in his name being erased from his children's family records. He ended up leaving Japan. “The film can create awareness,” he believes.
When he discovered “A Missing Part”, Vincent Fichot, very moved, recognized in the journey of the hero played by Romain Duris his “incomprehension” in the face of the separation from his children, the pain of living in an empty house and the support from loved ones during this ordeal. Today, the forty-year-old still hopes for help from the French authorities.
In the meantime, he worked on the Find My Parents mobile application: by combining multiple data and facial recognition software, it aims to help children who want to find their parents. The Ukrainian police, moreover, now use this tool to search for children kidnapped by the Russians.
Installed with his parents in the south of France, Vincent Fichot is now trying to “reposition himself financially, psychologically and physically”, “so that one day the little ones, if they want (the) find, be proud of (him) ».
French, Belgian and Japanese drama by Guillaume Senez, with Romain Duris, Judith Chemla, Mei Cirne-Masuki… (1h38)
