Yakushima's Illusion

Organ transplantation is to this day culturally and religiously contested in Japan: the border between body and soul, between death and living on, remains a delicate one. Naomi Kawase, always a filmmaker who lets spirituality and physicality flow into one another, devotes her first feature project in five years to this taboo.

“Yakushima’s Illusion” tells of Corry, a French heart surgeon working in a high-tech hospital in Kobe, where she meets fierce resistance to organ transplantation from colleagues and patients alike. Corry, who once met a photographer on the island of Yakushima who then vanished without trace, is plagued by violent fears of loss. Is he dead, or has he “evaporated”, like the so-called johatsu? Naomi Kawase answers with poetic images of ancient trees, fog-shrouded hills, plays of light between nature and clinic, birth and death.

Formally, “Yakushima’s Illusion” stays true to the shimmering Kawase cosmos; in its enlightening impulse and its interlocking of medical controversy with personal history it recalls her masterpiece “Sweet Bean”. Vicky Krieps plays Corry with quiet presence and is an ideal partner for a cinema that oscillates between mysticism and empiricism. The Luxembourgish actor carries the melodramatic weave — between paediatric heart surgery, lost love and philosophical questions of identity — with a still dignity that never tips into sentiment. What emerges is a work that rethinks organ donation not only medically but spiritually.

Shown at the 2025 edition of Around the World in 14 Films, Berlin.

All films 2025