The wildly talented multi-hyphenate Mayumi Yoshida returns to the YVR Screen Scene Podcast to discuss her long-awaited feature film directorial debut, Akashi, which is inspired by Mayumi’s own experience of living in the space between cultures. Ten years after moving to Vancouver, struggling visual artist Kana (that’s Mayumi) returns to Tokyo to attend the funeral of her beloved grandmother. Arriving in Japan, she rekindles a tentative flame with her bashful ex-boyfriend, Hiro, an aspiring thespian who vanished from her life a decade prior. As Kana digs deeper into her grandmother’s past, she uncovers a family secret that prompts her to reconsider everything she thought she knew about love, duty, and belonging.
Akashi – which Mayumi wrote, directed, and starred in – has its world premiere this week at the 2025 Vancouver International Film Festival. The feature began its life as a Fringe Festival play in 2016, before evolving into a Storyhive-funded short film in 2017 (the latter for which she earned a slew of awards, including the award for Best Female Director at the 2018 Vancouver Short Film Festival, and the Outstanding Writer Award at the NBCUniversal Short Film Festival). Although it’s been a long road to bring Akashi to the screen in its current feature-length incarnation, Mayumi hasn’t been idle in the intervening years: between directing short films – including the music video for Different Than Before, which won the SXSW Music Video Jury Award in 2023 – and working as a dialect coach and cultural consultant and advocating for diversity and inclusion in our challenging industry, Mayumi has been fighting to get this film made. This included, in 2021, taking on Telefilm, Canada’s major funding provider, for their outdated language requirements that didn’t take Canada’s purported commitment to diversity and inclusion into consideration. In this riveting conversation with Sabrina Rani Furminger, Mayumi reflects on her journey to this moment, how Akashi changed over the years, and how Akashi changed her as an artist.
Episode sponsor: UBCP / ACTRA
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The wildly talented multi-hyphenate Mayumi Yoshida returns to the YVR Screen Scene Podcast to discuss her long-awaited feature film directorial debut, Akashi, which is inspired by Mayumi’s own experience of living in the space between cultures. Ten years after moving to Vancouver, struggling visual artist Kana (that’s Mayumi) returns to Tokyo to attend the funeral of her beloved grandmother. Arriving in Japan, she rekindles a tentative flame with her bashful ex-boyfriend, Hiro, an aspiring thespian who vanished from her life a decade prior. As Kana digs deeper into her grandmother’s past, she uncovers a family secret that prompts her to reconsider everything she thought she knew about love, duty, and belonging.
Akashi – which Mayumi wrote, directed, and starred in – has its world premiere this week at the 2025 Vancouver International Film Festival. The feature began its life as a Fringe Festival play in 2016, before evolving into a Storyhive-funded short film in 2017 (the latter for which she earned a slew of awards, including the award for Best Female Director at the 2018 Vancouver Short Film Festival, and the Outstanding Writer Award at the NBCUniversal Short Film Festival). Although it’s been a long road to bring Akashi to the screen in its current feature-length incarnation, Mayumi hasn’t been idle in the intervening years: between directing short films – including the music video for Different Than Before, which won the SXSW Music Video Jury Award in 2023 – and working as a dialect coach and cultural consultant and advocating for diversity and inclusion in our challenging industry, Mayumi has been fighting to get this film made. This included, in 2021, taking on Telefilm, Canada’s major funding provider, for their outdated language requirements that didn’t take Canada’s purported commitment to diversity and inclusion into consideration. In this riveting conversation with Sabrina Rani Furminger, Mayumi reflects on her journey to this moment, how Akashi changed over the years, and how Akashi changed her as an artist.
Episode sponsor: UBCP / ACTRA
Simon Barry (Warrior Nun, Continuum) returns to the YVR Screen Scene Podcast to discuss his latest series. Bet – 10 episodes of which dropped on Netflix in May 2025 – draws its inspiration from the manga Kakegurai – Compulsive Gambler. The series tells the story of Yumeko (portrayed by Miku Martineau), a young woman who enrols in an exclusive boarding school to avenge the murder of her parents. This exclusive boarding school ain’t Hogwarts: it’s a cutthroat academy run by a powerful Student Council whose power structure is entirely based on gambling. Yumeko’s prowess at gambling and her overarching revenge quest put her in the crosshairs of the Student Council and its formidable president, Kira – leading to a showdown that is both high-octane and deeply satisfying.
Bet is at once a breath of fresh air and exactly what we’ve come to expect from Simon Barry: a wildly entertaining adventure set in an unexpected world about a whip-smart woman on a seemingly impossible quest. In this fascinating interview, Simon discusses his journey with Bet, what Miku Martineau brought to the pivotal role of Yumeko, his thoughts on AI, collaborating with director Jacquie Gould (Outlander, Obi-Wan Kenobi), Dennis Heaton’s brain, and what he learned from Warrior Nun and its fans.
Episode sponsor: Directors Guild Of Canada, BC District Council
The YVR Screen Scene Podcast
The wildly talented multi-hyphenate Mayumi Yoshida returns to the YVR Screen Scene Podcast to discuss her long-awaited feature film directorial debut, Akashi, which is inspired by Mayumi’s own experience of living in the space between cultures. Ten years after moving to Vancouver, struggling visual artist Kana (that’s Mayumi) returns to Tokyo to attend the funeral of her beloved grandmother. Arriving in Japan, she rekindles a tentative flame with her bashful ex-boyfriend, Hiro, an aspiring thespian who vanished from her life a decade prior. As Kana digs deeper into her grandmother’s past, she uncovers a family secret that prompts her to reconsider everything she thought she knew about love, duty, and belonging.
Akashi – which Mayumi wrote, directed, and starred in – has its world premiere this week at the 2025 Vancouver International Film Festival. The feature began its life as a Fringe Festival play in 2016, before evolving into a Storyhive-funded short film in 2017 (the latter for which she earned a slew of awards, including the award for Best Female Director at the 2018 Vancouver Short Film Festival, and the Outstanding Writer Award at the NBCUniversal Short Film Festival). Although it’s been a long road to bring Akashi to the screen in its current feature-length incarnation, Mayumi hasn’t been idle in the intervening years: between directing short films – including the music video for Different Than Before, which won the SXSW Music Video Jury Award in 2023 – and working as a dialect coach and cultural consultant and advocating for diversity and inclusion in our challenging industry, Mayumi has been fighting to get this film made. This included, in 2021, taking on Telefilm, Canada’s major funding provider, for their outdated language requirements that didn’t take Canada’s purported commitment to diversity and inclusion into consideration. In this riveting conversation with Sabrina Rani Furminger, Mayumi reflects on her journey to this moment, how Akashi changed over the years, and how Akashi changed her as an artist.
Episode sponsor: UBCP / ACTRA
