The 78th Locarno Film Festival has inserted Yakushima’s Illusion into its international competition, expanding a roster that already includes titles from five continents. The Swiss event runs 6–16 August 2025, with screenings set for the open‑air Piazza Grande and indoor venues around Lake Maggiore.
Naomi Kawase directs the drama, her first feature since 2020’s True Mothers, ending a five‑year gap that followed extensive documentary work and commercial shorts. The film centres on Corry, a French coordinator of paediatric heart transplants who travels to the southern Japanese island of Yakushima after a donor organ suddenly becomes available, forcing her to weigh professional duty against private loss.
Luxembourg‑based Vicky Krieps embodies Corry, leading a cast that moves fluidly between French and Japanese dialogue to mirror the production’s European‑Asian partnership. Financing comes from companies in France, Japan, Belgium and Luxembourg, with principal photography completed earlier this year in mist‑laden cedar forests and coastal villages around Yakushima.
Yakushima’s primeval landscape—protected as a UNESCO World Heritage site famed for millennia‑old yaku‑sugi trees—offers a backdrop that Kawase has described as “half earth, half memory,” expanding the environmental perspective she pursued in The Mourning Forest. Festival programmers highlighted the film’s examination of caretaking and mortality as echoing Locarno’s 2025 focus on humanity’s dialogue with nature.
The selection also marks Kawase’s first high‑profile festival berth since allegations of on‑set bullying surfaced in 2022; organisers declined to comment on the controversy, emphasising the artistic merits of the new work. With Rithy Panh presiding over the jury and a record 221 titles screening across sections, Yakushima’s Illusion now enters contention for the Golden Leopard against films from established auteurs and first‑time directors alike.
