Masayume

Forum audiences know Nao Yoshigai as the shadowy figure from Kaori Oda‘s Underground (2025), a young woman as a medium between two realms: everyday kitchen gestures and haptic explorations of caves and the past. In her directorial debut, this artistic all-rounder uses a similar hybrid form to confront her soul & inner life – and with it the universal questions of life and death, stories and images, materiality and spirituality. Following her mother’s passing, she seeks refuge and calm in a Zen temple to physically and mentally process what has engulfed her completely, paralysed her, stopped her in her tracks: her grief. In these Zen Buddhist surroundings, she learns to move her attention away from a human-centred perspective and on to the small hand movements and gestures, objects and rituals that make each single grain of rice a sensation. What in philosophy might be deemed an experience of transcendence is portrayed by Yoshigai with humour and sensual grace: she augments the retreat with family photos, performances and hand-drawn animations, from the rumbling stomach to the intestinal tract – and back to humility, acceptance, liberation. A moving three-acter without a story! (Christiane Büchner, Barbara Wurm)

Nao Yoshigai, born 1987 in Yamaguchi, graduated from the Department of Dance at Japan Women's College of Physical Education and earned her MA at the Graduate School of Film and New Media at Tokyo University of the Arts. Yoshigai considers the changes that occur in the mind and body when one tries to understand the world through the five senses, through activities such as dance. She makes films based on these sensations. She also appears in movies as a performer, directs stage productions and designs sets for stage productions.

Director Nao Yoshigai. Screenplay Nao Yoshigai. Cinematography Kaori Oda, Nao Yoshigai. Editing Nao Yoshigai. Music Tomohito Wakui. Sound Design Masaya Kitada. Production Design Koyuki Kato. Producers Nao Yoshigai, Eijun Sugihara. Production company WHITE LEOTARDS (Tokio, Japan). With Nao Yoshigai.

World sales WHITE LEOTARDS & Parallax Films

Films: 2015: hottamaru・days. 2017: Breathing House (short documentary), Stories Floating on the Wind (short film). 2018: Grand Bouquet (short film). 2019: Wheel Music (short documentary). 2021: Shari. 2026: Masayume.