Japanese Dox

What is family? After two years since ‘Embracing’ Naomi Kawase has woven a film of her life with her adopted mother (she calls her ‘grandma’). In the film, the everyday life of her little family is calmly narrated with the transition of four seasons and the growth of peas her ‘grandma’ planted. When she recalls her childhood memory that she used to believe snails were slugs with houses (shells), she thinks: ‘I’m a slug, a slug which, not allowed to become a snail, pretends to be a snail (‘snail’ is katatsumuri and ‘pretend’ tsumori in Japanese); and so I’m katatsumori.’ Naomi Kawase