Annual Top Films Lists

Top 100 Most Anticipated Foreign Films of 2018: #28. Naomi Kawase’s Vision

Published on January 4, 2018

Vision

Japanese auteur Naomi Kawase is a veritable fixture at the Cannes Film Festival since 1997’s Suzaku (which premiered in Directors’ Fortnight), but whose films rarely travel to the US. Kawase has competed in the main competition five times, winning the Grand Prize of the Jury in 2007 for The Mourning Forest and Prize of Ecumenical Jury just this past year for 2017’s Radiance (one of her only films to receive US distribution, 2015’s An, actually premiered in Un Certain Regard and was released by Kino Lorber as Sweet Bean). Kawase’s latest teams her with a titan of cinema, French actress Juliette Binoche, who portrays an essayist who travels to Nara and connects with a local mountain man (Masatoshi Nagase of An and Radiance).

Release Date/Prediction: Considering Kawase tends to be a favorite alum of Thierry Fremaux and she’s snagged Juliette Binoche as the lead, we expect her to be back in the Cannes lineup in 2018. Filming commenced in September, with a short break and resumed production in November.

Related Topics:2018 Most Anticipated Foreign Films List, Juliette Binoche, Masatoshi Nagase, Naomi Kawase, top-stories, Vision

Nicholas Bell

Los Angeles based Nicholas Bell is IONCINEMA.com's Chief Film Critic and covers film festivals such as Sundance, Berlin, Cannes and TIFF. He is part of the critic groups on Rotten Tomatoes, The Los Angeles Film Critics Association (LAFCA), the Online Film Critics Society (OFCS) and GALECA. His top 3 for 2021: France (Bruno Dumont), Passing (Rebecca Hall) and Nightmare Alley (Guillermo Del Toro). He was a jury member at the 2019 Cleveland International Film Festival.