Naomi Kawase

Missing Pictures

For every film completed, dozens of potential films fall by the wayside and never make it onto the big screen. In the VR experience Missing Pictures, Abel Ferrara, Tsai Ming-liang, Catherine Hardwicke, Naomi Kawase, and Lee Myung-Se give us a guided tour of a story they were not able to tell.

It Stopped Raining

A young bioarchaeologist Yukisuke is attracted to a girl Koyomi, who runs a small stand of taiyaki pastry that he often buys. Koyomi is hospitalized, however, by a car accident on a rainy day after they go out together, and wakes up with short term memory loss, where she cannot remember anything beyond the present day. Yukisuke tries to live close to her as before but the lack of collective memory starts to stagger him.

Reel Herstory: The Real Story of Reel Women

Using rare footage and exclusive interviews with filmmakers from all over the globe, "Reel Herstory" corrects the historic notion that women behind the scenes in motion pictures held peripheral careers compared with their male counterparts.

The Tale of Iya

As a tunnel construction project threatens the natural order of one of Japan's last untouched regions, an old man and his granddaughter Haruna's humble lifestyle begins to influence the outlook of a man from Tokyo.

Shining Besides Funny Moon

A sexy mystery movie where a dominatrix and a detective get to the bottom of a string of suicides.

Trace

Kawase pays tribute to the grandmother that raised her after being separated from her parents as a child. The film teems with memories, but it is the faded, dusty photographs capturing the kindness in her grandmother’s shy smile that truly bring the woman to life.

Birth/Mother

Tarachime is a documentary film which observes 'life' through childbirth. Kawase Naomi, a film director working under the theme of family, life and death, presents the bond of life through her own childbirth experience. "First, I was planning to film from the day I conceived a child and to the moment I gave birth. But I realized, while filming, that this is not the story of "one life." In the end, the film sublimed to a higher stage on which we can witness the knot tying one life with another."

Shara

The Aso family live in the old town of Nara. One Day, Kei, one of the Aso's twin boys suddenly disappears. Five years later seventeen-year old Shun, the remaining twin, is an art student. He now has to move forward with his life, together with his childhood friend, Yu.

Letter from a Yellow Cherry Blossom

Kazuo Nishii, renowned editor and photography critic, died in 2001 of stomach cancer. Two months earlier he contacted Naomi Kawase, whose works he admired, to document the remaining weeks of his life. Kawase visits him in the hospital and films the progression of his sickness and the conversations between the two.

Love & Pop

Tokyo schoolgirl Hiromi and her friends engage in a practice known as enjo kosai, or "compensated dating", where older men pay young girls for dates. Hiromi plunges deeper into this world to raise money for an expensive ring.

Amami

Naomi Kawase goes to the south of Japan in search of her family origins on Amami Island, with her four-year-old son Mitsuki. They meet parents, chat with the island’s inhabitants, eat traditional goat soup, observe a total solar eclipse. By reconnecting the threads of her family history, Naomi Kawase gradually fills the void left by her parents' abandonment.

Sky, Wind, Fire, Water, Earth

Kawase tries to come to terms with her late father, whom she never knew when growing up, and contemplates getting a tattoo like his.

Sun on the Horizon

The last piece of the trilogy, following 'Katatsumori' and 'See Heaven', filming her grandma and herself. Her gazes and insights are cast on the lovable beings in front of her eyes.

Memory of the Wind

Naomi Kawase observes people in the city of Shibuya with curiosity and openness, drawing parallels between life and filmmaking and discovering her abilities as a filmmaker.

See Heaven

The sequel to Naomi Kawase's Katasumori. The film revisits Kawase’s relationship with her "grandma", capturing their love and attachment towards each other.

Katatsumori

Filmmaker Naomi Kawase captures the love, loss, and loneliness felt as she prepares to move out of her foster mother's home.

Embracing

A diary film about Kawase's relationship with her grandma and her search for her father, whom she has not seen since her parents divorced during her early childhood.