Naomi Kawase has spent much of her career fending off labels, be it "woman director," "New Wave young hope" or "maker of autobiographical documentaries" the latter a genre she did much to popularize, starting with her student work in the late 1980s.
In her methods and concerns she resembles other documentarians turned fiction film directors, such as Hirokazu Koreeda and Nobuhiro Suwa, but she has also long gone her own way, quietly, stubbornly and successfully.
In May she reached a new career peak by winning the Cannes Grand Prix for her drama "Mogari no Mori (The Mourning Forest)," beating out a star-studded field that included Wong Kar-wai, Quentin Tarantino, David Fincher and the Coen brothers. Two far more famous fellow Japanese Takeshi Kitano and Hitoshi Matsumoto had garnered far more press attention for their new Cannes-bound films, but Matsumoto's "Dainipponjin" left the Directors Fortnight section empty-handed, while Kitano's "Kantoku Banzai!" was rejected for a competition slot.