ACCEPTANCE SPEECH
Thank you for inviting me. This film is based on my own grandmother when she suffered from Alzheimer’s; it is from that experience that I received the idea. My grandmother is significant because I was actually brought up by her; I don’t have my parents. She is basically my own mother and that is one of the reasons she is so significant. She was my best supporter in my life; to see the person who understood me most starting to lose herself and beginning to lose her understanding towards me, made me begin to feel a lot of anger and have a lot of frustrations within my heart. At times I was very hard on her; I took things out on her out of frustration. But as time went by, I understood that it was because of illness and I started to have more understanding about her situation. In this film, there are a few factors. One of them is that when you are suffering from Alzheimer’s, as the gentleman in the film is, you are ostracized from society. Indeed, there are a lot of problems in his life. But I hope that the audience watching this film starts to understand and be moved by this man who is ostracized from society. Perhaps all of us will change the way we feel about this particular illness and people who are suffering from it. I feel that human beings like us, without realizing, have prejudices within our minds; it’s the kind of people that we are. And such prejudices within us can lead to times of war as well as racial discrimination. I believe that if you sympathize with the other person and put yourself in their shoes, sometimes it is possible to achieve peace in the end-- that’s what I believe strongly. I want to continue making films by believing that this could happen and by believing things can happen. This is why I feel so honored to be given such a distinguished award. Thank you very much.