Kaori Oda
Kaori Oda (B. Osaka, 1987) is an artists and filmmaker whose works explore the memories of human beings.
She lived in Sarajevo for three years from 2013 and completed the Doctor of Liberal Arts in filmmaking under the supervision of Bela Tarr in 2016. Her first feature, Aragane (2015) shot in a Bosnian coal mine, had its World Premiere at Yamagata International Film Festival and received Special Mention. Her second feature, Toward A Common Tenderness (2017) a poetic film research, had its World Premiere at DOK Leipzig and TS’ONOT/Cenote (2019) shot in underwater caves in Yucatan Mex-ico, was premiered in Bright Future section at International Film Festival Rotterdam 2020. Her latest middle length film GAMA(2023) have been screened at MoMA Docfortnight, Cinéma du Réel and Festival du ciné-ma de Brive(Jury SFCC de la Critique). She received the Inaugural Nagisa Oshima Prize in 2020 and the new face award of Minister of Education Award for Fine Arts in 2021.
The final piece of a trilogy exploring the memories and sounds of subterranean spaces, Oda Kaori’s haunting docudrama follows a mysterious figure stalking the borderlands between darkness and light. This poetic study of landscapes finds its anchoring deep in the Okinawan gama caves where stories of life emerge from layers of ancient rock – blooming in the shadows of unspeakable human horror.