The fire grows larger, and becomes a large conflagration as Atsushi walks away. Kore-eda was originally interested in the disciples of Aum Shinrikyo, which had committed the Tokyo subway sarin attack. He did not intend for the film to be a direct critique of these type of sects but rather that it would bring attention to everybody's civic responsibility to stopping such attacks and "how each individual is directly related to or is responsible for a criminal act". There was a lot of improvisation when it came to shooting the film. Each of the main actors had information withheld about the other characters' backstory and were instead given the scenarios in which the characters would interact. The relationships between the characters were thus loosely built upon the actors' real world interactions. "Distance" has an 80% score on Rotten Tomatoes, with an average rating of 6.3/10. This film was nominated for the Golden Palm award at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival.