Unborn souls interview for a chance at life in the new Sony Pictures Classics drama “Nine Days,” written and directed by Edson Oda and starring Winston Duke, Zazie Beetz, Benedict Wong, Tony Hale, Bill Skarsgård, David Rysdahl, and Arianna Ortiz. The film, a Sundance Film Festival favorite, centers on a remote house in the desert where Will (Duke) conducts interviews and guides a variety of candidates through the vetting process for a chance to be born.
Oda, a Los Angeles-based Japanese-Brazilian filmmaker, makes his feature-length directorial debut with the film. While the film prompts viewers to take inventory of their lives, the writer-director is pleased with whatever viewers might take away from the story.
“I would be happy if people, after they watch it, somehow they think about their own lives, just think or feel something,” he said. “To remember something, and somehow either focus more on that, or maybe have a different perspective, or maybe notice something that they take for granted.”
“Nine Days” is a tribute to the gift of life, something that so many take for granted. Every soul interviewing for the opportunity of birth does not make the cut, just as many lives are cut short in the real world. Oda experienced his own personal tragedy with a beloved uncle who he lost to suicide. From that pain and being open and vulnerable, he would craft a beautiful testament to life through this story.
“I think I tried to be and hopefully was vulnerable enough to talk about my own struggles and pain,” he said. “I got a lot of messages from people, they came to me to talk about their experience with loss, their experience with trauma, their experience with pain, and how somehow, this film helped them connect to that side of them. Somehow, I think they healed a little bit from that, or have a different perspective on that, or maybe have more of a hope, instead of just the bad experience about it.”
Oda lost his uncle at age 12 when his uncle was 50. He patterned the main character of Will, a no-nonsense, unemotional gatekeeper. Through the story, he goes on a journey of self-reflection due to his encounter with a free-spirited candidate.
“He is living this constant denial of like, ‘Okay, I will deny life because life comes with joy, but it also comes with pain’,” he said. “Since he was so sensitive, he thought it wasn’t worth the joy. Finally, he had to say, ‘I want to joy but also want to know pain.’ I think in the end, he just like, accepts it. It comes with a lifetime of joy, but also comes with pain.”
“Nine Days,” written and directed by Edson Oda, is now playing in theaters.
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