Photo/Illutration A scene from “Truth: 1 Night, 1 Room, 3 Baddest Bitches” with, from left, Ayano Fukumiya, Tomomi Kono and Kotoha Hiroyama ((c) 2021 “Truth: 1 Night, 1 Room, 3 Baddest Bitches” Partners)

Three actresses who found themselves out of work due to the COVID-19 pandemic took it upon themselves to make their own movie, following the old showbiz maxim that the show must go on.

With subsidies from the government, the trio produced and star in “Truth: 1 Night, 1 Room, 3 Baddest Bitches,” a small-budget indie that will open in theaters on Jan. 7.

“For us, to express is to live. That was something we couldn’t stop, or rather, didn’t want to stop,” said project instigator Kotoha Hiroyama.

She had been scheduled to appear in a TV drama and a theatrical production, but both projects were canceled or postponed after the government declared a state of emergency in April 2020.

Hiroyama approached a couple of colleagues, Ayano Fukumiya and Tomomi Kono, who were also down on their luck. Together, they applied for subsidies from the Agency for Cultural Affairs to make a movie under a program to support the continuation of cultural arts activities.

They squeezed in their application with just five minutes to spare before the deadline expired on Sept. 30 last year.

Now armed with a budget of just 7 million yen ($61,300), they were required to finish the film by the following December.

They turned to Yukihiko Tsutsumi, a veteran filmmaker who had worked with Hiroyama for his film “The Big Bee” (2015), for advice, and he was more than happy to come onboard as director.

The team also enlisted the cooperation of a screenwriter, a cinematographer and other essential staff members.

After a series of online rehearsals, they shot scenes in two days in late November.

The story revolves around a delinquent-turned single mother (Fukumiya), a wealthy doctor (Kono) and a vain receptionist (Hiroyama) running into each other in a studio that had been run by their lover (Jiro Sato), now deceased. The women end up having a violent row over which one of them he loved the most. This leads them to making an important decision that closes out the film.

“When we talked about how we wanted the story to be with the director, we three only had ‘strong women’ in mind, but then Tsutsumi suggested, ‘How about a battle royal?’” Fukumiya said.

“The three women in the movie are awakened to the ‘desire to live’ by the death of the man they all loved,” Kono added.

Related News