Programmed May 2022

Directed by Naomi Kawase

Building from an early start in nonfiction filmmaking, Naomi Kawase has developed a lyrical, quietly affecting body of work over the past three decades, exploring Japanese family structures and cultural values through a profoundly empathetic lens. Describing her narrative works as “fiction with a documentarian’s gaze,” Kawase steeps her films in the beauty and sensual pleasures of the natural world, finding deep spiritual and philosophical resonances. Featuring the moving slice-of-life drama Sweet Bean and the streaming premiere of Kawase’s latest, the heartrending family portrait True Mothers , this sampler of some of Kawase’s recent films offers an introduction to an artist of supreme sensitivity and emotional insight.

No longer streaming