Yoshihiro Nakamura entered the film world on a well-trodden path. After making 8 mm films while studying at Tokyo's Seijo University and winning a prize at the 1993 Pia Film Festival — a famous incubator for young Japanese filmmakers — he worked as an assistant director for Juzo Itami, Yoichi Sai and other prominent directors. He made his directorial debut with the 1999 comedy "Local News."
After that typical beginning, however, Nakamura took something of a left turn by scripting and directing films in the then-hot horror genre. One was the hit 2002 film "Dark Water" ("Honogurai Mizu no Soko Kara"), which Nakamura scripted from Koji Suzuki's best-seller of the same title. Another was "Booth" ("Zettai Kyofu Busu"), a 2005 indie shocker that Nakamura scripted and directed.
Unlike director Hideo Nakata and his other J-horror colleagues, Nakamura made a successful exit — or rather, an "escape" — from the genre and began directing sci-fi and mystery films, usually based on popular fiction and featuring tricky sleight-of-hand plots with a brilliant reveal at the end. Many have been screened at festivals abroad, including "Fish Story" (2009), "Golden Slumber" (2010) and the 2014 mystery "The Snow White Murder Case" ("Shiroyukihime Satsujin Jiken"). I selected all of the above for the Udine Far East Film Festival, with Nakamura coming as our guest in 2014.