Desert of Namibia

Disaffected 21-year-old Kana (rising star Yuumi Kawai) works at a beauty salon, where the expectations placed on women her age are plain to see. In her personal life, her mood oscillates between soaring highs and deep lows. Bored with her slavish boyfriend, she begins another relationship, the novel excitement it brings soon devolving into an increasingly volatile predicament. Burning bridges, uncommitted and trapped in her own life, Kana makes her way towards the inner desert of her emotions.

Alternating between claustrophobic blocking, ample zooms and expressive whip-pans brought together by dryly comedic editing and an intense actor’s direction, the sophomore effort from director Yoko Yamanaka (the youngest filmmaker to have a film selected at the Berlin International Film Festival with her 2017 debut Amiko) provides a frank and dynamic examination of womanhood and mental health in contemporary Japan. Inspired by Yasuzo Masumura as much as the Cassavetes/Rowlands collaboration, Yamanaka breaks out with a work of stark confrontational honesty.

“Elusive, DESERT OF NAMIBIA is an ultra-melancholic slapstick comedy, a slow-burn vaudeville, a fantasy film without monsters or ghosts–or else entirely populated by monsters and ghosts, but with a seemingly everyday quality… About a generation's relationship to the world… Singular.” – Jean-Michel Frodon, Slate (France)

“Kawai’s masterful, multilayered performance, which presents Kana more as willful and lost than born bad and raised wrong, both exposes and humanizes her.” – Mark Schilling, Japan Times

“The messages here are klaxon-level clear. Japanese conformity is killing Kana and her generation as they twist themselves into shapes that don’t fit.” – Fionnuala Halligan, Screen International