sequel...

I saw this awesome movie at the Berlin Film Festival 2002. The director was there for a Q&A, and he did say that they were working on a sequel. I am not entirely sure he was serious, although I think the movie was a big success in Japan and also did fairly well in other markets, at least for a Japanese movie.
The reason I am saying I am not sure whether or not he was serious about the sequel is that the whole Q&A was a very tedious affair.
Instead of asking questions about the movie and the production, some people thought they had to lecture the director on "problems with the storyline and chracter development", the kind of stuff frustrated film students blabber about. That is very typical for film festivals. One guy said, I don't know what you are all talking about, I just enjoyed it. Several people applauded. I decided to say something too, and said that I thought it was a very good movie because it has a very consistent athmosphere and the story is far more complex than meets the eye at first, the way people are haunted by fates they didn't even chose. I also commented very positively about the sparse but concentrated visual design and the few hints at a decrepit future rather than a kitschy pseudo sci-fi look. Suddenly the whole auditorium (except for those few arrogant idiots probably) broke into a big round of applause. Not for me, but for the film, because I think most people had the same opinion. Those negative comments before had been greeted with embarassed silence by the audience. After that, the ice was broken, and the director who had been in a position where he almost had to defend himself, was much more talkative. Of course, he hadn't made any efforts to defend his film and the script. In typical Japanese fashion, he just said, I am sorry you were not entertained.
Still, most of the Q&A time was wasted by those idiots. When he mentioned the sequel, it was basically in response to another smartass comment like "the ending is somehow too open, I think". To which he just replied, we left the ending open so that it would be easier to find a starting point for a sequel, and we are indeed working on that now. But it wasn't entirely clear if he maybe just said that because he didn't want to be dragged into a pointless discussion again.

I seem to remember that not only was a sequel planned, but it was being filmed and the lead actress was injured during one of the fight scenes and I never heard anything about it since and this was about 4 years ago.