naomi kawase: retrospective | 2026
Films participating in the Naomi Kawase: Retrospective Section:
Naomi Kawase: Retrospective Section Presentation
Within contemporary Japanese cinema, few filmmakers possess a voice as intimate and unmistakable as Naomi Kawase’s. Her work seems to emerge directly from memory, from the landscape, and from the deepest layers of emotion. Far from spectacle or frenetic storytelling, Kawase creates films that look at time, silences and human fragility. Her cinema speaks of loss, nature, family, and the search for identity, transforming personal experiences into universal narratives.
Her work has been especially celebrated at international festivals such as the Cannes Film Festival, where she received recognition at a very young age, and she has since become one of the most prestigious Japanese filmmakers of recent decades.
Nara, the city in which Naomi Kawase was born on 30 May 1969, is essential to understanding her work. She grew up in a rural, traditional environment marked by the absence of her parents, who separated when she was a child. Raised by her great‑aunt — a decisive figure in both her life and her films — Kawase transformed that experience of abandonment and reconstruction into the emotional core of much of her cinema.
Kawase studied photography and audiovisual production at the Osaka School of Photography, where she later taught. Her early works were autobiographical documentaries shot on small formats with an aesthetic close to that of a personal diary. In them, she explored her own family history: the search for her estranged father, her relationship with the great‑aunt who raised her, illness and motherhood.
Her international breakthrough came in 1997 with Suzaku (Moe no Suzaku), the film that earned her the Caméra d’Or at Cannes, making her the youngest director ever to receive the award. From that moment on, her career was closely linked to major European festivals and to the prestige of contemporary auteur cinema.
One of the most distinctive elements of Kawase’s work is the blend of documentary observation and fictional narrative. Many scenes feel as if they were spontaneously captured, as if the camera were simply recording real life. This sense of authenticity stems from her documentary background and her interest in registering genuine emotion. Her films often feature non‑professional actors, natural light and real locations, resulting in a cinema of great visual intimacy.
In Kawase’s films, nature is never a mere backdrop. Forests, wind, water and rain act as emotional extensions of the characters. The forest in The Mourning Forest symbolizes memory and mourning; the sea in Still the Water evokes the cycle of life; the rural landscapes of Vision call up family roots and tradition. Her way of seeing is closely connected to spiritual elements of Japanese thought, especially the idea that nature holds a sacred, living dimension.
Kawase’s films move away from the accelerated pace of commercial cinema. She favors silence, long takes and small everyday gestures. Often, what matters most is not action but the emotional experience of the moment — as in her latest work, Yakushima’s Illusion, which, still unreleased in Spain, is being presented at Cines del Sur.
Naomi Kawase’s cinema is a poetic exploration of existence. Her films speak of pain, memory and nature with a profoundly human sensitivity. Through quiet, contemplative images, she transforms personal experiences into universal reflections on the passage of time and the fragility of human bonds.
More than telling conventional stories, Kawase invites the viewer to pause, observe and feel. Her work shows that cinema can become a form of memory, of mourning and also of reconciliation with life.
