Naomi Kawase

Naomi Kawase continues to make films based in Nara City, the town where she was born and raised. Her works, made through a consistent reality, go beyond the boundaries of documentary and fiction, and have received many awards from film festivals around the world, including two prizes from the Festival de Cannes: the Caméra d’Or for her debut film, Suzaku (1997), and the Grand Prix for The Mourning Forest (2007). Her recent films include Still the Water (2014), Radiance (2017), Vision (2018), starring Academy Award winner Juliette Binoche, and True Mothers (2020). While broadening spaces for expression in the world, in her own hometown, she started the Nara International Film Festival in 2010, and devotes her energy to cultivating the next generation of filmmakers. Serving as the director of the official film of the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics, a producer and senior advisor for Expo 2025 in Osaka-Kansai, Japan; a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador and writing essays, Kawase produces a wide variety of work, regardless of genre. In 2022, she was appointed Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Government. In her private life, she is a mother of a child who grows vegetables and rice.