Naomi Kawase

Naomi Kawase, the lens of Japanese naturalism, was born in 1969 in Nara, Japan and has been active in the film industry since the early 1990s. Renowned for her stylistic blend of documentary and fiction, her main genres are drama and documentary, with some of her most distinguished films including "Suzaku," "The Mourning Forest," and "Still the Water." Kawase has been honored with several awards, notably the Camera d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1997 for "Suzaku" and the Grand Prix in 2007 for "The Mourning Forest," both marking her distinct, deeply personal style that often explores the relationship between people and nature. Kawase, with her quiet strength and unwavering gaze on the human condition, has a knack for making the ordinary extraordinarily profound.