An excerpt from the article:

Split into five different stories that delve into everything from a ninja (played by '80s punk singer John Stabb Schroeder) trying to find love to two people's unorthodox use of the French language, Ekanayake used films like Jim Jarmusch's "Night on Earth" and Jean-Pierre Jeunet's "Amelie" to find the pace and tone for his film. What he leaned most from them was to keep the stories simple. "All the drama, all the ups and downs that happen inside each of the stories would happen in real life within a couple of hours so it's not necessary to bring about factors unrelated to the moment," says Ekanayake.