YAKUSHIMA’S ILLUSION
DIRECTOR: NAOMI KAWASE
122 minutes. FRANCE, JAPAN, BELGIUM, LUXEMBOURG. 2025. Languages: JAPANESE, ENGLISH, FRENCH. Subtitled. COLOUR.
Official Selection, Locarno International Film Festival 2025
IFI DUBLIN
tue 12 may 18.15
BOOK TICKETS: IFI DUBLIN
eye cinema galway
THU 14 may 19.00
BOOK TICKETS: eye cinema GALWAY
TRISKEL CORK
THU 21 may 18.00
BOOK TICKETS: TRISKEL CORK
Corry (Vicky Krieps), a French expert in pediatric heart transplant, is sent to a transplant center in Kobe, Japan – an assignment weighted with cultural complexity. Organ donation remains a deeply taboo and sensitive subject tin Japan, rooted in beliefs about the soul's continued presence in the body after clinical death. While visiting Yakushima's ancient forest, she meets Jin (Kanichiro), a free-spirited photographer, and the two fall for each other. One day Jin vanishes – is he dead, or one of Japan's so-called Jōhatsu, people who disappear overnight to escape their former lives? Naomi Kawase's new film (Vision, EAFFI 2020) is a luminous meditation on loss, connection, and the ephemeral nature of being.
(Marie-Pierre Richard for EAFFI Discoveries)