Director’s Portraits

Get to know one of Mexico’s most distinctive filmmakers and one of the great humanists of Japanese cinema, and experience the diverse filmography of the director behind last year`s success film Parasite at our digital festival.

Michel Franco

Director, producer and screenwriter. The Mexican filmmaker Michel Franco keeps himself busy and likes to be involved in multiple aspects of a film production. This leads to greater control and marks his projects with a more distinct artistic signature than the film industry usually allows. This makes it exciting to observe what moves within Franco’s works, because they presumably reveal something about him as a person. And watching the films he has directed thus far, it becomes apparent that this is an artist that is primarily preoccupied with the darker realities of human existence.

After making several shorts, he made his feature film debut with Daniel & Ana, which was nominated for the Camera D`or at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival. A pair of siblings are kidnapped and forced to have sex on camera and are left with a ransom demand and unimaginable trauma. Here, Franco pulls us into his universe, where dramatic circumstances leave the human beast gnawing away at spirit and dignity. This may also describe many of his later films, not least After Lucia, which revolves around the brutal teen culture of circulating sexual videos.

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"New Order" by Michel Franco

In several of his later films, both as producer and director, Franco exhibits a marked political awareness. However, his newest film New Order is, in his own words, the first of his films to explicitly comment on the political situation in Mexico. And after seeing the film, there is reason to be worried about the direction in which the country is heading.

Naomi Kawase

Naomi Kawase is valued as one of the great humanists of Japanese cinema, on the same level as Hirokazu Koreeda (Shoplifters, Like Father, Like Son). She graduated from the Osaka School of Photography in 1989, and during the next few years she worked within the documentary genre, largely dealing with the trauma of being abandoned by her parents at a very young age. Kawase's approach to fiction is also heavily influenced by her documentary gaze. The documentary realism that characterizes her films is enhanced by the fact that she often uses amateur actors and serves as the starting point for stories of cultural status, alienation and the collapse of traditional family structures in contemporary Japan.

The major international breakthrough came with her first feature film Suzaku in 1997, for which she won, as the youngest director up until then, the Camera D'or Award at the Cannes Film Festival. Since then she has made a total of 32 films, many of which have premiered in Cannes.

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Kirin Kiki in "Sweet Bean" by Naomi Kawase

When diving into Kawase's filmography, you will discover a unique sensitivity and an extraordinary ability to portray relationships between people. In Norway, she is best known for Sweet Bean (2015), which tells the story of the aging Tokue, who, with the help from her special pancake recipe, rescues a food stall run by the young chef Sentaro. Through emotional immersion and the focus on small, charming details, Kawase demonstrates an exceptional ability to capture both minor and major human drama.

With her latest film True Mothers, it is obvious that Kawase is forging the ring when it comes to processing her own childhood trauma. Here, she lets us in on the emotional life and thoughts of a couple who want children, and a mother who abandons her child.

Bong Joon-ho

Bong Joon-ho was the talk of the town when his last film Parasite premiered in Cannes last year. It received ecstatic reviews from critics and was a favourite among bookmakers to win the Palme d’or. Which it did, as the first ever Korean film. The enthusiasm was not slighted when Parasite also brought home an Academy Award for Best Picture. We are obviously very proud to present a large part of Bong’s filmography, as Parasite is only the last masterpiece from a career of many hidden gems that not many have had the chance to experience.

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"Barking Dogs Never Bite" by Bong Joon-ho

In his debut film Barking Dogs Never Bite, we see Bong's distinctive use of black humour and satire at play, before he dived into the serial killer genre with Memories of Murder, one of the great highlights of his career. Here, we are also introduced to the wonderful actor Song Kang ho, who stars in Parasite. This year's programme also features the magnificent thriller Mother, and Bong's international breakthrough, the dystopian sci-fi fable Snowpiercer.

From the very beginning, Bong has demonstrated an extraordinary ability to reach both a blockbuster-loving and a more arthouse-bended crowd, and to switch between genres. If you loved Parasite, be sure to catch as many of these films as you are able to, as many of them are hard to come by through on-demand providers.

Films by Michel Franco:

Films by Naomi Kawase:

Films by Bong Joon-ho: