Nao Yoshigai

Photo: Natsuki Kuroda

Nao Yoshigai

Nao Yoshigai (b. 1987 in Yamaguchi Prefecture) is a choreographer, dancer and filmmaker. After studying dance in Japan Women’s College of Physical Education’s Department of Dance, she went on to study at the Graduate School of Film and New Media of Tokyo University of The Arts. Yoshigai began activities as an artist in the 2010s. Since then her works combining physical expression and filming as essential elements have won high acclaim internationally, as exemplified by the selection in 2019 of her film Grand Banquet (2018) for the Director’s Fortnight Short Films category of the 72nd Cannes Film Festival. Yoshigai was born and raised in what is known in Japan as the “lost 20 years” after the bursting of the country’s “Bubble Economy,” a turning point in the country’s postwar economic history that occurred in 1990.