CONVERSATION – Naomi Kawase: “It is as a human being that I approach my fictions”

After graduating in 1989, Naomi Kawase soon turned her attention to making documentaries, a genre she is very fond of and that still influences the way she creates her fictions today. Working with modest means, she very soon achieved international recognition for her films. In Cannes in 1997, she became the youngest director to win the Caméra d’or for her film Suzaku, and ten years later she won the Grand Prix for Mogari (The Mourning Forest). She talks about her relationship to cinema.

When was your earliest memory of cinema that really left its mark on you?
I was eighteen years old and I had just started attending film school. It was there that I first had access to films from the French and American Nouvelle Vague. That’s when I discovered the difference between commercial films and auteur films, but also the idea that a filmmaker has the possibility of free expression, if he or she wants.

Didn’t you go to the cinema when you were a child?
I lived in a small town where there was no cinema. My daily life was summed up by spending time with my adoptive parents. It was at that time that the universe that is found in my films was forged.

You mentioned Nouvelle Vague. How did it inspire you?
Godard’s way of filming life really influenced my style, my way of depicting reality. I am talking about Godard, but I could just as well have mentioned Tarkovsky, Erice… these filmmakers constructed a very personal and very free way of rendering reality. Their work contains a very large measure of their own life experience.

What are the stages in your creative process?
My desire to make a film always starts with a personal event that leaves its mark on me and that I want to translate into images. I create fictions from very personal things. For example, for The Mourning Forest, it was the illness of my adoptive mother, who had Alzheimer’s. For me, family and human relationships are very important. They represent a connection between the past and the future. And I like to make this vertical connection with nature.

You have made many documentaries. What does this format represent for you?
Before being a filmmaker, I am a human being, a person. It is as a human being that I approach my fictions. Documentaries are turned towards reality, whereas fiction is created by actors. This is why I feel closer to the documentary. It can reveal certain difficult situations and change them into something positive. I can only imagine a fiction after having made a documentary.

Even in your fictions, you usually use non-professional actors. Why is that?
Working with non-professional actors, who have never learned how to act, enables me to bring an aspect of authenticity to my films. They let me express things in a more lively way, more real and more authentic.

What do you think of Japanese film today?
I have had the privilege of seeing all the films in Competition and they are all very different. I think that this is what is missing from Japanese film. It needs more diversity. Many scripts for Japanese films are based on mangas or fictions written for television. I don’t know if this is the case in other countries, but I attach particular importance to original scripts for films. We don’t have many very original films in Japan. Perhaps this is due to the fact that it is a country with a very marked and very specific culture.

Given this culture, is it complicated to be a female director in Japan?
It’s difficult but I am determined.

Interviewed by Benoit Pavan