Third time’s a charm for Director Josef Kubota Wladyka, whose feature film, “Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty,” finally landed him a debut at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, what he describes as “every independent filmmaker’s dream.”
“To finally get in, and then for it to be the last one in Park City, is almost like, I don’t know it’s something really magical about that, and I’m really, really grateful,” he said. “I’ve been making films for 20 years … to finally be there with this film, it just means so, so, so, so much to me.”
Especially because the film hits close to home, heavily inspired by his mom. It’s also a film that brings a few of Kubota Wladyka’s other dreams to fruition — like trying a different genre from his previous “serious, social thrillers,” making a dance film, a film set in Japan and a film with a Japanese main character.
“All these ingredients I kind of threw into a pot, and this movie is what came up the other side,” he said with a laugh.
While not autobiographical, the film follows a ballroom dancer in the Tokyo competitive dance scene as she navigates grief through her craft.
“The film is very much an homage to her spirit,” Kubota Wladyka said of his mom, from the main character’s curly perm and dance outfits to the message. “(It’s) a fun mix up of everything about her, and seeing her go through a lot of pain in her life but always falling back on dancing to help her get through — it is sort of the mantra of the film, in a way.”
The film is also very multicultural, Kubota Wladyka said, something born from his own time spent in Tokyo filming two seasons of “Tokyo Vice.” He said he always wanted the main characters, Haru and Luis, to be from different cultures.
“We’re used to seeing the all-American person in Japan, fish out of water, when we see films filmed in Japan. But the reality is, if you spend time in Tokyo … you come to realize that there’s people from all over the world that live there,” he said. “There’s people that speak all kinds of different languages that live there.”
In the film, Japanese actress Rinko Kikuchi brings Haru’s spirit to life with her performance, despite having no ballroom dance experience, Kubota Wladyka said. In fact, none of the cast had a ballroom dance background, so they all had to start from zero, one of the challenges of filming.
“I remember, I did call my mom to be like, ‘What is one dance that we can fall back on that maybe is the quickest to learn?’ And where we landed on was the rumba,” he said. “We can’t do every single type of ballroom dancing. We have to kind of pick and choose because, otherwise, there’s no way they’re going to be able to learn any of it.”
The cast worked with two choreographers over an intense, four-week rehearsal period to be ready for the film. While observing that time, Kubota Wladyka said some of those rehearsal moments even found their way into the script.
These dance scenes are a way to convey a wide variety of emotions, something the director said he witnessed growing up.
“Going to ballroom dance competitions with my mom, when you watch dance routines very closely — let’s just say for example a tango routine — you go through the spectrum of all these different feelings: lust and love and loss. And it’s all within this one dance sequence,” he said. “So we kind of wanted to use that as the spectrum of the emotional arc of what the character’s going through.”
And of course, it couldn’t be a dance film without music.
“The music is the rhythm of the movie in a way — it’s a dance film — and it’s also sort of tracking her emotional movement throughout the film,” Kubota Wladyka said. “It’s a very, very important character in the film.”
While the film features iconic Japanese, Spanish and ’90s pop songs — specifically written into the script from the beginning — the original score composed by Emmy-nominated Nathan Halpern further tells the story.
For the veteran composer, working on “Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty” was an opportunity to explore new sounds and techniques.
The original score centers around a flute voice, with layered, abstracted harps that together trace Haru’s inner emotional life, Halpern said. He also incorporated sounds inspired by nature such as breath and voice, and a chamber string ensemble brings an intimate fantasy quality to the whole, coming together in what Halpern describes “a rich tonal palette.”
“I’ve never done anything like that. … It’s not something that had ever crossed my mind before, but in the context of what’s happening in this film and this world and this story: That completely inspired it,” Halpern said. “This is one of the great blessings because the film kind of talks to you and inspires ideas that you might not have had otherwise.”
Music, Halpern explained, can help define more difficult to articulate themes, emotions and feelings because it’s something that’s beyond language and reason. It also moves the story along, he said, giving form to the narrative as a whole.
“It’s a real cinematic experience. You’re being taken on a journey, being taken into a world. You’re going somewhere very new and very special,” Halpern said of the film. “(With music) you’re finding a way to really help to define the world that the audience is going to enter into.”
Halpern first attended the 2012 Sundance Film Festival with a score in “Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present” and most recently was recognized at the 2025 festival with the “Will & Harper” premiere. He worked with Kubota Wladyka as the composer on his film “Catch the Fair One” and said he’s excited for the director to have his Sundance debut with “Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty.”
“For the quintessential Sundance film, we’re talking about works and films that defy typical genre characterizations,” Halpern said. “This is a film that I see as being both very personal, very individual vision and, at the same time, something that has tremendous universality and the potential to connect with all different people.”
It’s a unique, emotional ride, and hopefully a fun one, Kubota Wladyka said, as they ride the line between humor and absurdity.
For Halpern, returning to Sundance with such a one-of-a-kind film brings his history in Park City to a fitting close as the festival prepares to move to Boulder, Colorado.
“I’ve had my first film scores premiere here at Sundance, and I have had the experience of coming here with films that I felt were very special,” said Halpern. “It’s been very special, so it is very poignant to me that it’s the last one at Park City. It’s been a really magical environment for these films.”
It’s that audience experience that Kubota Wladyka said he’s most eager, and nervous, for.
“I’m really excited to put it in front of an audience. And I just know that from my colleagues who always go to Sundance, the people that go to the films there are people who love cinema, real cinephiles, and people who just enjoy going to the movies. So those are the people I’m most excited to show the film to,” he said.
Plus, his mom, who still competes in ballroom dance at 81, and has yet to see the film.
“I want her to see it with an audience on the big screen. I think this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for her to see it,” Kubota Wladyka said. “She’s going to witness it with 1,200 people at the Eccles on the first night, so it’s going to be pretty emotional, I think.”
“Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty” will premiere at 6:45 p.m. on Jan. 22 at the Eccles Theatre, followed by a Q and A with Kubota Wladyka, Halpern and the cast.
‘Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty’ in-person screenings
- 6:45 p.m., Jan. 22, Eccles Theatre
- 8:30 a.m., Jan. 23, The Ray Theatre
- 6:00 p.m., Jan. 23, Rose Wagner Center, Salt Lake City
- 2:30 p.m., Jan. 30, Megaplex Redstone 4
- 8:30 p.m., Feb. 1, Library Center Theatre
Online
- 8 a.m., Jan. 29-11:55 p.m., Feb. 1