Rotterdam Lab

Hikaru Toda

Hikaru Toda is a director/producer and the founder of Little Stranger Films. Raised in the Netherlands, she holds master’s degrees in visual anthropology and performance making from Goldsmiths College, University of London. Her debut feature documentary Of Love & Law (2017) won top awards at Tokyo International Film Festival (2017), Hong Kong International Film Festival (2018) and was nominated for an Asia Pacific Screen Award for Best Documentary (2018). She most recently directed an episode of Netflix's Original Documentary Series My Love: 6 Stories of True Love (2021) which has been nominated for an International Documentary Association award. She is developing her first feature film about intergenerational memory set in the first national leprosarium in Japan.

Little Stranger Films – Japan

Little Stranger Films (LSF) is an independent production company based in Japan working primarily in the field of feature length non-fiction films since 2015. With a strong focus on individual stories that reflect the conditions of the collective whole with nuance, integrity and humor, LSF has made films that weave the personal with the political, highlighting the experiences of those that are less visible. LSF aims to expand further into boundary pushing story-telling by nurturing diverse collaborations with experienced and emerging filmmakers. With a vision to create a network of individuals with distinctive voices, LSF's goal is to represent common yet complex human conditions in a poetic and reflective cinematic experience.

Projects in development 

Paradise Island by Hikaru Toda (feature, fiction/non-fiction)

Released films

Of Love & Law, 2017 (feature documentary)
My Love: 6 Stories Of True Love; Episode 3 Kinuko and Haruhei, 2021 (feature documentary)

 

Hikaru Toda