Mika Ninagawa was once a successful and much-awarded photographer who made the occasional music video or movie. There was a five-year gap between her 2007 debut feature, the period drama "Sakuran," and her 2012 showbiz drama "Helter Skelter." Next was a seven-year hiatus until her 2019 horror-fantasy "Diner."

But Ninagawa quickly followed up "Diner" with the 2019 Osamu Dazai biopic "No Longer Human," and has since finished her first Netflix series, the nine-part "Followers," which will drop on Feb. 27. She is an "occasional" director no longer.

The daughter of Yukio Ninagawa, a famed theater director, Mika Ninagawa grew up in the Japanese entertainment world and adopted its colorful, extroverted side to her own aesthetic, which takes more cues from the hade ("gaudy") maximalism of kabuki than the shibui ("restrained") minimalism of noh.