Embracing Film

Embracing is about Kawase's search for the father who abandoned her as a child.

Naomi Kawase

Naomi Kawase is a Japanese film director. She was the youngest person to win the Caméra d’Or (for best debut feature film) at the Cannes film festival, for Moe no suzaku [1997]. Kawase began her career as a film director with autobiographical documentaries. Ni tsutsumarete (Embracing) [1992] documented her search to find her father, whom she had not seen since early childhood, after her parents’ divorce. In her second film, Katatsumori [1994], Kawase portraited her great-aunt, who raised her. These and other intimate family themes are recurrent in Kawase’s nonfiction filmography between 1992 and 2012. Since 1997, she also directed several critical acclaimed and multi awarded full-length feature films. In 2007, Kawase won the Grand Prix at Cannes for Mogari no mori (The Mourning Forest), which explored the themes of death and bereavement that had dominated some of her earlier works.