‘Alice in Borderland’ Star Isomura Hayato on the Role He Was Warned Off, Judging Tokyo’s Ethical Film Award and Why Japanese Cinema Needs Government Backing

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When Isomura Hayato was considering a part in “The Moon,” Ishii Yuya’s drama drawn from a real incident at a facility for people with disabilities, the people around him tried to talk him out of it. The events were still fresh, and they worried the role could damage his career.

He took it anyway. The performance won him the Japan Academy Film Prize for best supporting actor.

“So if I didn’t take this role, I thought probably it’s like I’m kind of running away from the theme or this subject,” Isomura tells Variety. “I didn’t want to deny like dignity or the meaning of existence that was depicted in this film. So I thought I wanted to challenge that role, and that’s why I took this role in that movie, ‘Moon.’”

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That pull toward difficult material runs through a career that moves between Netflix’s global hit “Alice in Borderland,” the “Tokyo Revengers” franchise and independent dramas such as Hayakawa Chie’s “Plan 75” and Kishi Yoshiyuki’s “(Ab)normal Desire.” This year it landed him on the jury of the Ethical Film Award at the Tokyo International Film Festival, which runs through Nov. 4, where he judged alongside three students from the festival.

The jury did not pick the nominees. It inherited three very different films – an animation, a documentary and a realistic fiction feature – and had to choose one. Every film carries some ethical theme, Isomura says, but because this was the Ethical Film Award, “I was thinking which film was, which film was sincerely facing these people or the environment or the society, and how they are putting those messages into form.”

The prize went to “I Rarely Wake Up Dreaming,” German director Isabelle Stever’s drama about gender set against Russia’s war in Ukraine. Plenty of films tackle gender, Isomura notes. Pairing it with war was new to him.

“And in Japan, if you live in Japan, war is something far away. Of course, in the history there was war and we were always fighting in the war, but nowadays, the war is kind of far away for me,” he says. “So, I could find, I could discover from this film new values and new kind of sensibility.”

Deliberations came down to the eventual winner and “Amadeo,” a Brazilian animated feature set in 1830s Brazil, in which a young African man invents photography before the Europeans and uses it to help enslaved people win their freedom. The two titles stayed in contention until the very end. Isomura was struck by how the student jurors weighed the films. Their question was often whether a film left room for hope, and whether viewers would walk out feeling lighter – a lens he says differs from his own.

Social themes, political ones included, are an important consideration for Isomura when weighing a film role.

“So, if I can agree with the subject, of course I’ll do the role, but even if I cannot agree with the subject, sometimes I’ll try the role because I want a new way of thinking, a new point of view that, that I didn’t have in the past,” he says. That approach hasn’t shifted as his career has grown.

Television is a different calculation. Japanese TV drama can’t go as deep into ethical territory as cinema, he says, so when choosing series he weighs how entertaining they will be.

Blockbusters and smaller films both allow for creative expression, Isomura says, calling that the peaceful answer. Personally, though, he finds that films like “The Moon” and “Plan 75” let actors and directors say what they actually think, even if the result is edgier. What he would like to see is more Japanese entertainment that carries political satire and black humor.

“We can find those kind of films in the United States, but not as much in Japan, because probably Japanese people are serious, so they’re kind of dividing entertainment films and like social films,” he says.

Japanese content’s growing reach overseas has been a source of real pleasure. Isomura, who also stars opposite 2PM’s Ok Taecyeon in the Netflix series “Soul Mate,” says comments from international viewers make him want to thank them in person. He wants to take on work abroad when the chance comes.

“I’d like to like kind of battle with the world with Japanese films,” he says.

On the state of the industry, he has great hope for Japanese film. He admits to wishing he had acted during the golden age of Kurosawa and Ozu, but points to Kore-eda Hirokazu and a wave of younger directors now competing at international festivals, many of them determined to work beyond Japan.

“If you think about Japan, I think we need more funds, more support from the from the government for the entertainment and for the films,” Isomura says. “And I want the government to be more interested, interested in entertainment and films.”

He points to South Korea, where a change of government shifted the climate around film.

Isomura is currently in theaters in Yoshida Keisuke’s “Mentor,” released Oct. 16, and has another, still-unannounced film he expects will be released overseas. As for directing, he would like to try once his acting career settles down.

In the meantime, he is producing the Shizuoka Film Festival in his home prefecture, an event he intends to keep running every year. He started it, he says, to give something back to the region and to nurture film culture.

“There are less people in Japan who are going to movie theaters and see movies in with screen,” he says, “so I wanted more and more people to see the movies in screen.”