What happens when heartbreak collides with an irresistible urge to dance?
In HA-CHAN, SHAKE YOUR BOOTY!, grief and joy exist side by side. Director Josef Kubota Wladyka discusses the deeply personal inspiration behind the film — including his Japanese family roots — while Rinko Kikuchi’s Haru discovers that moving forward doesn’t always mean leaving sorrow behind.
Sometimes it simply means finding the music again.
HA-CHAN, SHAKE YOUR BOOTY! stars Oscar nominee Rinko Kikuchi and is a Sony Pictures Classics release.
#HaChanShakeYourBooty #RinkoKikuchi #IndependentFilm #InsideTheArthouse #SonyPicturesClassics @SonyPicturesClassics
OPENING VO
RAPHAEL SBARGE:
Some films remind us that even when life breaks your heart, there’s still music to be heard — and every reason to keep dancing.
The new film HA-CHAN, SHAKE YOUR BOOTY! does exactly that, with tenderness, magical realism, unexpected humor, and an irresistible sense of joy.
Rinko Kikuchi stars as Haru, a woman whose life in Tokyo has been built around ballroom dancing with her husband. But after tragedy strikes, Haru retreats from the world, until the possibility of new desire begins pulling her back onto the dance floor.
The film is deeply personal for director Josef Kubota Wladyka, inspired by his Japanese mother, a single parent who found strength and freedom through ballroom dancing. It celebrates the way music and movement can reconnect us with life.
At the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, Wladyka received the Best Director Award — a fitting recognition for a film that moves effortlessly between the everyday and the fantastical.
Join us for a conversation with director Josef Kubota Wladyka about HA-CHAN, SHAKE YOUR BOOTY! on Inside the Arthouse, starting now.
INTRODUCTION
GREG LAEMMLE:
Hi, my name is Greg Laemmle.
RAPHAEL SBARGE:
And I’m Raphael Sbarge.
GREG LAEMMLE:
And welcome to another episode of Inside the Arthouse.
Today we’re here with Josef Kubota Wladyka. He’s the director of a new film — and it’s going to be one of my favorite titles to repeat this year, without a doubt — HA-CHAN, SHAKE YOUR BOOTY!
RAPHAEL SBARGE:
I love this movie. We see a lot of movies, and every week we get to talk to someone else, and I was literally breathless watching this.
Every moment, I was sort of thinking, “Oh my God, he’s going to go there.”
It was so joyous. I couldn’t stop laughing, and it was sad. It’s a beautiful film, so I was really excited to talk to you.
I understand that your mother, who is 82 and a competitive ballroom dancer — and is still competing — was really the inspiration for this.
The second part of the story takes a pretty tough turn for Haru. Was that also related to something in your family, or did that emerge from the story?
JOSEF KUBOTA WLADYKA:
First of all, I just want to thank you guys for having me and hosting us. It’s a real honor to be here.
It’s great to have people still fighting for arthouse cinema and independent cinema, so I’m really grateful and honored to be here.
The film isn’t biographical. It’s very much an homage to my mom and to her spirit.
She had a huge influence on me growing up. She loves movies, and this was really a film I wanted to dedicate to her.
I’m the youngest of three boys, and she was a single mother raising all of us on her own. We saw a lot of the hardship she went through, and she would always say that ballroom dancing was what saved her life and helped get her through all of that.
So that became the baseline for the film: seeing a character who loses someone incredibly important to her and then, through her love of dance, moves through these phases of grief and tries to find her way back to the life she had before.
GREG LAEMMLE:
In terms of the grieving process, did that come from a personal connection for you, or did your co-screenwriter bring the idea of framing it around this universal experience?
JOSEF KUBOTA WLADYKA:
It’s actually slightly inspired by my mother’s current partner.
He was a mechanic his whole life, but he was also a ballroom dancer. He had been married before he met my mom, and his wife passed away.
After that, he went into a depression. Eventually his family encouraged him to go back to the dance studio and get out again.
And when he finally did, that’s where he met my mom.
RAPHAEL SBARGE:
It’s such a high-wire act emotionally. The film goes back and forth between these different tones, and maintaining that through-line is really quite brilliant.
Kudos to you and the screenwriter for finding that arc.
JOSEF KUBOTA WLADYKA:
Thank you.
My screenwriting partner, who’s also one of my closest friends, and I started writing it coming out of the pandemic, when the world just felt like it was ending.
My last film was coming out at the time, and it was a very different film.
We just wanted to write something different.
We would write things on little Post-its and stick them all over our walls, working remotely like this.
And one thing we always had up there was: “Where’s the joy?”
We knew we wanted the film to have real emotional weight, but we also wanted to know how to shift gears and bring joy into it.
Dancing is such a wonderful thing. It’s so visual.
We always thought of the film almost like a fable. It’s elevated in certain ways, but I think the performances — especially Rinko Kikuchi, who is amazing — bring this truth to it that we all felt was really special.
RINKO KIKUCHI AND FINDING HARU
RAPHAEL SBARGE:
Rinko is astounding in the movie.
We are emotionally connected to her in every single moment — through a thought, a gesture. There isn’t a moment where I don’t feel almost umbilically connected to her.
I understand that she asked you for videos of your mother, and instead of sending formal material, you sent videos of you just hanging out together.
How did Rinko find her way into Haru? What did she bring to it?
JOSEF KUBOTA WLADYKA:
She has this incredible ability.
On set, she can make you laugh and cry within a single beat.
It was a tough film for her to take on because she had to learn all the dancing. She had no ballroom-dance background.
And she always said she was nervous because she knew the film wasn’t biographical about my mom, but it was an homage to her.
She felt a great responsibility toward that, and she really took it head-on.
She asked me to send her videos of me and my mom just hanging out.
My mom and I have a very funny dynamic, so I sent her ordinary conversations between us.
And it became very powerful because there were moments while we were shooting when Rinko would do something in a scene and it would suddenly remind me of a memory from when I was a little boy watching my mom.
I would get incredibly emotional.
I don’t know whether she channeled something or what happened, but she’s phenomenal.
She was also completely willing to be silly and try things.
She understood the tone we were going for, and she could be incredibly powerful in those emotional moments.
RAPHAEL SBARGE:
Those dance sequences have such searing chemistry.
JOSEF KUBOTA WLADYKA:
One thing she captured really well is that my mom isn’t a professional dancer. She’s been doing amateur/pro-am dancing for years.
But when she steps onto that stage, she transforms.
It becomes: It’s time to perform.
Rinko captured that.
We knew we were never going to get the ballroom dancing absolutely perfect.
So I always told the actors that what mattered was the emotion and the theater of it.
It was okay if every chasse or New Yorker wasn’t perfect.
What mattered was: What is the emotional movement of the dance sequence?
TRAILER EXCERPT
HARU:
I miss you.
VOICE:
You need to dance.
VOICE:
Are you going to join us?
HARU:
Yes.
VOICE:
So, what brought you back to the studio?
HARU:
I just want to move.
VOICE:
You left in a hurry the other night.
Did you miss me?
CREATING THE DANCE SEQUENCES
GREG LAEMMLE:
You have to talk about the dancing.
You essentially had four weeks to get these actors ready.
And there are different dance styles. You have performance sequences, and then you have scenes that move more into fantasy.
JOSEF KUBOTA WLADYKA:
When you’re making a film, there’s always one thing that’s going to give you an ulcer.
For me, it was the dance sequences.
We had this amazing cast, but none of them had ballroom-dancing experience.
And with ballroom dancing, there are standard styles and Latin styles, so the first question was which dances we could realistically focus on.
We had two amazing choreographers in Japan, Miri and Chikako-san, who worked with the actors for about four weeks.
They started by getting them comfortable with basic steps — rumba, cha-cha, tango, and so on.
Then they were thrown into this extensive boot camp.
The cinematographer and I also had to figure out how to photograph everything in a way that allowed the actors to stay inside the performance.
We had this idea throughout the film that music makes the camera move.
We had a wonderful Steadicam operator, and we used that extensively so the camera could move with the actors during the dances.
We also used a zoom lens so we could zoom within the choreography while filming.
It was a tremendous amount of work for the actors.
I also consulted my mom.
I asked her which dances might be manageable enough for us to really drill down on, which is one reason we feature the rumba so much.
And tango is incredibly beautiful when you see professionals doing it. The movement is extraordinary.
But tango also has these very intimate holds and poses that are inherently dramatic.
So we knew we could use that to create the illusion that we knew what we were doing.
GREG LAEMMLE:
It works seamlessly.
And Rinko is playing an amateur, so she doesn’t necessarily have to look like a world-class dancer.
But everyone around her helps carry the authenticity.
JOSEF KUBOTA WLADYKA:
Exactly.
Miri is very connected to the ballroom-dancing world in Tokyo, because ballroom dancing is huge in Japan.
So we surrounded our actors with world-champion dancers.
When you see those sequences in the ballroom, many of those people are top-level dancers in Japan.
She really helped us connect with that community.
JAPAN, MEXICO, AND CULTURAL IDENTITY
GREG LAEMMLE:
The film is also very much about cultural differences.
You come from two cultures yourself.
How important was that element to you personally, and to the story?
JOSEF KUBOTA WLADYKA:
I’ve always felt that was a beautiful part of the film.
I come from two different cultures. My father was from Poland and my mother was from Japan.
And often we don’t see what happens when people from very different cultures come together and certain differences emerge.
That was something we always wanted to explore.
There are also many movies shot in Japan where, if there’s a gaijin — a foreigner — they’re usually American.
But if you spend time in Japan, you realize there are people there from all over the world.
For me, the movie became a culmination of different experiences in my own life.
I spent a long time shooting in Latin America. I made my first feature in Colombia and worked with some wonderful actors there.
And I’m a creature of comfort. I like working with people I’ve worked with before.
The same is true of Rinko. I worked with her on Tokyo Vice in Japan.
So this film was partly about bringing those different experiences and people together and putting them into a story we hadn’t quite seen before.
GREG LAEMMLE:
And when Luis’s body is taken back to Mexico, Haru wants to perform the Japanese cremation ritual, and that disagreement really sets in motion what becomes almost a ghost story.
JOSEF KUBOTA WLADYKA:
Exactly.
His soul isn’t resting.
So Haru manifests this presence that continues looming in the house.
We wanted to explore how different cultures deal with death, the afterlife, and mourning.
RAPHAEL SBARGE:
It almost becomes a crutch for her.
Just because you’ve gone through the process society expects you to go through doesn’t mean you’re no longer mourning.
But because she isn’t able to perform that ceremonial act, she now has something else to attach the grief to.
It becomes, “I can’t move beyond this because this hasn’t happened.”
JOSEF KUBOTA WLADYKA:
Yes.
One of the beautiful things about filmmaking is that when you’re location scouting, you get this unusual window into people’s lives.
You enter people’s homes and see how they’re organized. You absorb the feeling and energy of a place.
Japan and Mexico are on opposite sides of the world, but Mexico has Día de los Muertos and the honoring of ancestors, and Japan has Obon, another tradition devoted to honoring people who have passed.
Since we were bringing together two people from these backgrounds, we wanted to explore that.
Even though they come from opposite sides of the world, there are these connections.
And dance is similar.
People all over the world dance.
It exists beyond language.
MAKING A FILM THAT REFUSES A GENRE
JOSEF KUBOTA WLADYKA:
This was one of the first films where I really tried to be as open as possible.
The film starts talking to you as you’re making it.
And because we were making something that’s hard to explain in terms of genre, I realized I needed to embrace that.
GREG LAEMMLE:
We were talking about that before you came on.
What genre do you call this?
JOSEF KUBOTA WLADYKA:
I sometimes call it a fantasy dance drama.
Maybe it’s a grief comedy.
I don’t know.
But eventually I realized we were making something that was its own thing — its own organism.
So I needed to open myself up and invite the actors into that process, and allow the characters to evolve while we were shooting.
That can cause stress because of course you want everything planned.
But I really tried to let the film speak to us.
FINDING THE FILM IN THE EDIT
GREG LAEMMLE:
How much did the film change during editing?
It’s beautifully edited by Benjamin Rodriguez Jr., who has also worked with Paul Schrader.
JOSEF KUBOTA WLADYKA:
Ben and I went to film school together. We were in the same year at NYU Graduate Film.
So we know each other extremely well.
We’re basically a married couple who gets into fights.
He would probably say I’m very particular about how things have to be.
What’s great about Ben is that he’s very honest.
If something doesn’t work, he doesn’t sugarcoat it.
But he also knows that we can find it if we keep working the material.
I like to go through and watch everything together.
He wasn’t on set because we’re an independent film and could never afford that.
So we watch everything, begin constructing scenes with the design in mind, and then start shaping it.
You disappear into this cave for ten weeks.
And you don’t really know what you have.
This movie takes some weird swings and wild turns.
Eventually you realize: Okay, we need to show this to somebody.
We had our first feedback screening, and the response was very positive.
People gave notes, and from there we knew we had something special.
Then it became about fine-tuning, pacing, and not being too precious.
KAWAII KARASU: GRIEF, CROWS AND A VERY STRANGE GHOST
RAPHAEL SBARGE:
I wanted to ask about something you’ve said about your mother — that sometimes she hugs you almost like a stranger.
I wondered how that found its way into the movie.
And I also want to invite you to talk about the raven.
JOSEF KUBOTA WLADYKA:
We call it Kawaii Karasu — the bird in the film.
There were many iterations of this while we were writing.
I can’t even tell you how many drafts there were. Probably hundreds.
We wanted some kind of manifestation of Luis’s presence still inside the house — something coming from Haru’s imagination.
We took a fairly universal symbol. Around the world, ravens and crows are often associated with grief and death.
But we also wanted to bring in yuru-kyara, this Japanese culture of cute mascot characters.
So essentially, we thought: Let’s make a cute symbol of death.
That became Kawaii Karasu.
And part of that came from my mother.
She’s not the most affectionate person, and from my experience with my family in Japan, people can sometimes be less physically demonstrative.
So we wanted to create something cute, warm, and inviting for Haru to embrace.
That’s why she hugs it when it first appears.
When I was shooting in Japan, I would see these cute mascots on the street and everybody — especially children — would run up and hug them.
That’s where it all came together.
RAPHAEL SBARGE:
What would actually bring that out of her.
JOSEF KUBOTA WLADYKA:
Exactly.
And then, of course, we wanted to make it weirder and weirder.
Eventually Luis is literally inside it.
What I think is remarkable — and again, this is a testament to Rinko — is that she was always willing to accept the circumstances of the scene and play them completely truthfully.
We don’t explain very much.
And somehow the audience understands.
Even near the end, when she says goodbye and he blasts off into the afterlife, you understand what is happening because the emotion is so clear.
That’s thanks to Rinko.
You feel it.
RAPHAEL SBARGE:
She takes us with her.
JOSEF KUBOTA WLADYKA:
Exactly.
There is also the idea of the Hinotori, the firebird or phoenix, representing rebirth and a new path.
That became the full journey of Kawaii Karasu: being set on fire and transforming into this phoenix as Haru enters the next chapter of her life.
CHAPTERS OF GRIEF
GREG LAEMMLE:
Speaking of chapters, you divide the film into chapters in this very playful way.
Was that connected to the stages of grief — the Elisabeth Kübler-Ross idea?
JOSEF KUBOTA WLADYKA:
No. That actually emerged while we were shooting.
It wasn’t in the script.
Because the film has this fable quality, and because there are such distinct gear shifts, I thought chapters might help anchor the audience.
They give you a little signal: something has changed, and we’re entering another section.
We also knew we wanted them to be fun.
My partner Ari Miyagi and her design team created all of the chapter cards and hand-drew the Japanese titles.
It’s actually my voice reading the English, and our translator and associate producer Rico reading the Japanese.
THE FILMS THAT INSPIRED HA-CHAN
RAPHAEL SBARGE:
You’ve described how free you allowed yourself to be in making this.
And yet the movie holds together beautifully.
Were there films you used as touchstones — something you could point to and say, “This is roughly the feeling we’re after”?
JOSEF KUBOTA WLADYKA:
There were many films that influenced us.
When I’m in prep, I usually put together a list for the crew and department heads.
I tell them, “You don’t have to watch all of these.”
Maybe one day when I have a big budget, we can all go to a theater and watch them together.
But for now, I give them a list.
One was Punch-Drunk Love.
RAPHAEL SBARGE:
The poster is in the background!
JOSEF KUBOTA WLADYKA:
Correct.
We were very grateful to get the Japanese Punch-Drunk Love poster into the film.
It’s one of my favorite Paul Thomas Anderson movies.
It has this dreamy quality, but it’s also incredibly romantic and lovely.
Another was the Japanese film Shall We Dance?, directed by Masayuki Suo, which is one of my mother’s favorite movies.
A lot of her favorite films became inspirations.
A Man and a Woman, the Claude Lelouch film — she always talks about how much she loves that.
And there’s a little Miyazaki in there, a little My Neighbor Totoro.
We took all of these different elements and put them together.
RAPHAEL SBARGE:
And they work together beautifully.
SUNDANCE
GREG LAEMMLE:
We’re not the only ones who think that.
The Sundance jury clearly felt the same way. You won the directing award there, so congratulations.
Did it feel like something changed for you afterward?
JOSEF KUBOTA WLADYKA:
Every independent filmmaker dreams of having a film at Sundance.
It’s the great American independent-film festival.
I had been making short films, features, applying to labs — doing all of that — for a very long time.
To finally get in with this film, and for it to be the final festival in Park City, was incredibly powerful and emotional for me.
The whole thing was a blur.
I was overwhelmed.
I’m very introverted. I don’t particularly like being public-facing or speaking in front of a lot of people.
So much of it was a blur.
But I’m just grateful we got there.
We finally got one in.
GREG LAEMMLE:
It took twenty years, but you got there.
JOSEF KUBOTA WLADYKA:
Exactly.
HIS MOTHER SEES THE FILM
GREG LAEMMLE:
Going back to your mother again — what does she think of the movie?
JOSEF KUBOTA WLADYKA:
She’s the film’s number-one champion.
She’s on Facebook promoting it nonstop.
She puts posters up at her dance studios.
She had read the script, so she knew something about the film, but that’s very different from sitting in a theater with twelve hundred people and seeing it huge on the screen.
She was very, very happy.
My mom is 82 now, and she’s the reason I became a filmmaker.
After making two features and directing a lot of television, this was simply a film I felt I had to make.
I don’t know how much longer she’s going to be here.
That’s the biggest thing for me personally.
I still can’t believe we did it.
We made this weird movie, and it’s an homage to her.
Rinko has my mom’s curly permed hair.
The clothes are inspired by her.
The blue dress she wears — all of that comes from memories of watching my mom get ready for dance competitions.
I showed the costume designers photographs of the dresses she wore, and we pulled from all of that.
I think her spirit is part of why the movie is connecting with people.
At least I hope so.
We’ll see.
It still has to come out.
KEEPING INDEPENDENT FILM ALIVE
RAPHAEL SBARGE:
People have to see this.
It’s incredibly original, and perhaps because of your mother, it also feels grounded, rooted, and deeply felt.
GREG LAEMMLE:
And audiences will have the chance.
HA-CHAN, SHAKE YOUR BOOTY! opens in theaters across the country September 25.
Check the Sony Pictures Classics website or wherever you normally find showtimes.
And of course, talk to your local arthouse theater and make sure they have it on the schedule.
JOSEF KUBOTA WLADYKA:
And again, I have to thank you for your theaters and for what you do.
I’m pretty sure both of my earlier films played at Laemmle in Los Angeles — Manos Sucias and Catch the Fair One.
It’s hard out there for independent films.
We have to keep trying to fight for them and put them into theaters.
I have so much appreciation for what you do.
GREG LAEMMLE:
Independent cinema is important because it allows you to make something idiosyncratic and original.
The first instinct in a studio environment can often be: “We don’t know what this film is. We need to put it into a box.”
That can be useful in some ways, but if you want to make something as singular as the person who inspired you to make it, you can’t necessarily put it in that box.
JOSEF KUBOTA WLADYKA:
And I really have to thank Sony Pictures Classics for believing in the film and taking a risk on it.
They saw how people reacted to it at Sundance and connected to the feeling of the movie.
I’m incredibly grateful that they came on board and are putting it out into the world.
CLOSING
GREG LAEMMLE:
Josef Kubota Wladyka, it’s been a pleasure having you on Inside the Arthouse to talk about HA-CHAN, SHAKE YOUR BOOTY!
JOSEF KUBOTA WLADYKA:
Thank you.
RAPHAEL SBARGE:
And for everyone watching, we hope you enjoyed this episode.
Please share, like, and let people know about the film.
HA-CHAN, SHAKE YOUR BOOTY! opens September 25 in theaters nationwide.
Don’t miss it.
Please come back and join us for more.