Hiromi Kamata didn't always want to be a director. After seeing the classic legal drama 12 Angry Men, she wanted to be a lawyer. Then, after viewing Raiders of the Lost Ark, she set her sights on archaeology. She soon made a critical realization. "It wasn't law I was obsessed with, or history, but film."
Kamata, who is of Japanese and Mexican heritage, appealed to her cinematographer father to let her go to film school, but he wanted her to avoid the entertainment industry and become a lawyer. Still, he allowed her to be a summer intern at his commercial production company to experience firsthand how challenging it could be. Instead, says Kamata, "I fell in love with it. So he had no choice."
She began working as a production assistant, climbing the ranks, when director-producer Alejandro González Iñárittu (Birdman, The Revenant) hired her to be a part of his team on Babel. The four-time Oscar winner took her under his wing, and eventually Kamata landed a job as first assistant director on the Mexican series Niño Santo, before taking a turn as a full-fledged director on an episode. More directing jobs followed, including her first English language show, the Netflix drama Selena: The Series, about the late Tejano singer, and currently, Showtime's Let the Right One In.
The ten-episode thriller series stars Demián Bichir as Mark, the father to a twelve-year-old girl who was turned into a vampire, leaving Mark in the terrible circumstance of having to supply his daughter with human blood to keep her alive.
Kamata helmed the season's penultimate episode, titled "Monster," airing December 4. "It was very challenging," Kamata says of the episode, which brings together two major storylines. "When I read it, I sat with [director of photography] Eric Branco and said that I think it should be shot entirely from the father's point of view."
The result is haunting, and puts the viewer in the shoes of Mark, who doesn't always know what's going on around him. That was all by design, says Kamata, who has two more projects in the pipeline: the long-awaited Shōgun for FX and The Horror of Dolores Roach for Prime Video. "I find it more interesting sometimes to not let the audience see what's happening," she says with a smile. "It's scarier to imagine it."
Let the Right One In is executive produced by showrunner Andrew Hinderaker, director Seith Mann, and Marty Adelstein and Becky Clements for Tomorrow Studios (an ITV Studios partnership). Alissa Bachner is coexecutive producer, and Bichir serves as a producer.
