Diamonds in the Sand

Diamonds in the Sand (2025)

ひとりで死ぬのはイヤだから

Divorced salaryman Yoji has just buried his mother in Tokyo. With few meaningful relationships left, he comes to grips with the realization that he has nothing to live for. A chance encounter with Minerva, a Filipina migrant worker who appears to sense his sadness, urges him to see his situation in a new way. A former nightclub entertainer, Minerva now works as a caregiver to provide for her only child in the Philippines. When Yoji discovers the decomposing corpse of his neighbor, an old man whose name he does not know, the death is ruled a kodokushi, or the lonely death. Unwilling to meet the same fate, Yoji throws caution to the wind to follow Minerva to Manila, the capital city of the Philippines.

Date of release
2025-10-30
Runtime
1h 42m
Genres
Drama
Director
Janus Victoria

Casting

Interesting facts

Diamonds in the Sand is a 2024 drama film written and directed by Philippine author-documentary director Janus Victoria in her feature film directorial debut. The film stars Lily Franky as a divorced Japanese salaryman who decided to move to the Philippines, where he believed that no one would be alone. It also stars Charlie Dizon, Maria Isabel Lopez, Soliman Cruz, Stefanie Ariane, and Kazuko Yoshiyuki in one of her final film roles before her death in September 2025.

Production

In 2010, author and documentary director Janus Victoria became fascinated with the topic of kodokushi (lonely death) after she met the people behind the said topic, commissioned by NHK. With this, she made the concept and was then presented to the people of the 2013 Talents Tokyo, the talent development program for Asian filmmakers which is commissioned by the Berlin International Film Festival, where it won the Grand Prix.

With the help of producers Lorna Tee and Masumi Soga, Victoria spent a total of 11 years bringing the concept into a feature film, five of which were allocated to making the storyline and screenplay.

As part of preparing for the role of Minerva, actress Maria Isabel Lopez underwent Japanese language training for two months, with the help of a tutor. She further stated that 95 percent of the film's written dialogue is in the said language.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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