is a Japanese director and screenwriter. Nishikawa received a degree in literature from the University of Waseda, and after working on several independent films as well as catching the eye of Hirokazu Kore-eda, her film making career took off with her first film, Wild Berries, which won the award for best screenplay at the Mainichi Film Award. In addition to her film making career, Nishikawa has also written a book titled The Long Excuse.
Life and career
Nishikawa began her film career as a college student working as a staff member on Hirokazu Koreeda's 1998 film After Life. Soon afterward she was an assistant director for Yoshimitsu Morita on his 1999 thriller . and again on Kore-eda's 2001 movie Distance. When Nishikawa went on to write and direct her first feature film, the September 2003 release, Wild Berries, Koreeda was the producer. The film won the Best New Director award at the 2004 Yokohama Film Festival, the Best New Director prize at the 13th Japanese Professional Movie Awards and the Best Screenplay Award and one of the Sponichi Grand Prize New Talent Awards at the 58th Mainichi Film Concours for 2003.
After directing a segment in the omnibus work Fiimeiru, Nishikawa wrote and directed her second feature film Sway in 2006. The film brought Nishikawa both the Best Screenplay and Best Director awards at the 28th Yokohama Film Festival and the film won First Place Best Film at the festival. In 2009, she directed her third full-length film Dear Doctor and also wrote the screenplay which she adapted from her own novel. Nishikawa won the Best Screenplay award at the 31st Yokohama Film Festival where Dear Doctor took the Best Film Award. She also took the Best Director award at the 2009 Hochi Film Awards.
Nishikawa's next film, Dreams for Sale, about a young couple engaged in a marriage fraud scheme, was released in Japan in September 2012 and was shown at various international film festivals including the Toronto International Film Festival, the Chicago International Film Festival and at the Japan Society of New York. Nishikawa travelled to San Francisco for the film's screening at the first Japan Film Festival in San Francisco in August 2013. Breaking into film under the tutelage of acclaimed auteur Hirokazu Kore-eda, Nishikawa collaborated on her first film (Wild Berries) with him using a personally written script.
Wild Berries (2003)
Miwa Nishikawa's first feature film; in collaboration with Hirokazu Koreeda, a drama as well as an ironic comedy, launched her into the limelight. Wild Berries is a story of an ordinary family that turns unstable when their frivolous son Shuji returns home after a long absence. Tomoko, the responsible daughter of the family, is a grade school teacher. As the only member of the family who has a job and a good moral sense, the family sees her new boyfriend as a savior. The action begins when Tomoko Akechi, the daughter of the family, brings her fiancé home for dinner to meet the family. The boyfriend claims he is charmed by the Akechi's Industry, but the viewer finds out that the father is unemployed and slaving for money. The senile grandfather whom every member of the family secretly detests, dies suddenly, much to everyone's relief. At the grandfathers funeral, the prodigal son Shuji makes a grand entrance, narrowly saving Yoshiro (The Father) from an angry creditor. The arrival of Shuji seems too good to be true when he is able to swiftly evade creditors with a seemingly unending flow of cash. The alienated sister Tomoko, recalls Shuji boasting about a remote patch of wild berries not too far from their house. Tomoko tries to find this patch to no avail. Reminding Shuji of this incident, he offers to show her this patch. What happens during this hike is exactly the dangerous moral predicament that Tomoko is desperate to escape.
Sway (2006)
Director and screenwriter of this film; Nishikawa, with the help of distribution companies: Bandai Visual, Eisei Gekijo, Engine Film and TV Man Union, presents her second feature film. Sway is representative of Nishikawa's likeness of the pre-straight-to-video salad days of Japanese Cinema. Playboy Photographer Yakeru Hayakawa reluctantly returns to his family's rural home for his mother's funeral. Barely anything has changed; he is still the spoiled brat, the father is still a bully, the pushover brother Minoru is still working at the gas station and Hayakawa's Ex, Chieko, is still available. A recent medical-school graduate, Keisuke is mentored by the two and learns what his big city degree didn't teach him, the emotional connection between doctor and patient. Her 2009 collection of stories Kinō no Kamisama (Gods of Yesterday) was shortlisted for the Naoki Prize, and her 2015 novel Nagai iiwake (The Long Excuse) became a candidate for the Yamamoto Shūgorō Prize.
Filmography
{|class="wikitable" style="font-size:100%"
|-
! rowspan=2|Year
! rowspan=2|Title
! colspan=2|Role(s)
! rowspan=2|
|-
! Director
! Writer
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! 2003
|Wild Berries
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! 2006
|Sway
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! 2009
|Dear Doctor
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|
|
|-
! 2012
|Dreams for Sale
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|
|
|-
! 2016
|The Long Excuse
|
|
|
|-
! 2020
|Under the Open Sky
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|
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|-
! 2026
|Children Untold
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|-
|}
Recurring collaborators
{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center;font-size:100%;vertical-align:bottom;"
|-
!rowspan=2 !! !! !! !! !! !!
|-
!! !! !! !! !! !!
|-
| width="140"|Teruyuki Kagawa || || || || || ||
|-
| width="140"|Tamae Andō || || || || || ||
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| width="140"|Shōfukutei Tsurube II || || || || || ||
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| width="140"|Chikako Hara || || || || || ||
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| width="140"|Katsuya Kobayashi || || || || || ||
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|}
Bibliography
- Gods of Yesterday (Kinō no kamisama), 2009
- The Long Excuse (Nagai iiwake), 2015
Awards
{| class="wikitable sortable"
|-
! Year !! Film !! Award !! Competition
|-
| 2003 || Wild Berries || Best Screenplay || Mainichi Film Award
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| 2004 || Wild Berries || Best New Director || Yokohama Film Festival
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| 2004 || Wild Berries || Best New Director || 13th Japanese Professional Movie Awards
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| 2007 || Sway || Best Screenplay <br/> Best Director <br/> Best Film || 28th Yokohama Film Festival
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| 2009 || Dear Doctor || Best Screenplay <br/> Best Film || 31st Yokohama Film Festival
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| 2009 || Dear Doctor || Best Director || Hochi Film Awards
|-
|}