NAGI NOTES (Cannes 2026) – Review by Diane Carson
Nagi Notes particularizes architect Yuri’s return to small Nagi life
Following an introspective, searching Yuri on her return from Taiwan to small town life in mountainous, rural Nagi from Taiwan, writer/director Koji Fukada presents an understated, engaging exploration of a community through the two women at its center. Recently divorced, architect Yuri (Shizuka Ishibashi) reestablishes her close, restrained relationship to her now ex-sister-in-law Yoriko (Takako Matsu). A sculptor of human-size blocks of wood that she will chainsaw and shape into recognizable human likenesses, Yoriko takes Yuri on as a model, ensuring hours of time together. In a comfortable, complementary partnership, Yuri and Yoriko explore past, life-defining decisions and consider pivotal future choices. For her part, Yuri must decide if she will return to Taipei, reunite with her ex-husband, and accept a new architectural project or stay in Nagi. Yuri’s assessment of her way forward involves complex personal and professional considerations, all thoughtfully explored.
In a parallel plotline, teenagers Keita (Kiyora Fujiwara) and Haruki (Waku Kawaguchi) confront their own critical decisions. The son of an army father who must soon relocate, Keita has bonded with Haruki, his only close friend in Nagi. Slowly recognizing and tentatively acknowledging their love for each other, they too consider leaving a country still denouncing homosexuality. At a crossroads, they debate options within the limited maturity of their age while also being granted the full emotional register of their situation. The multiple interconnections among these central characters plays out against the backdrop of the military base where Keita’s father works. Periodic tests with explosions there interrupt quiet Nagi and references to the Ukraine war add another geopolitical reminder of the outside world. An added detail finds three cows having escaped their fenced in area, a nice metaphor. The title itself–Nagi Notes–signals the unpretentious approach. Never marred by sensationalizing its content, instead the characters calmly act and react, their time marked by the tearing of calendar pages for each day, beginning March 13, significantly the month when spring hints at a time of renewal. At the film’s Cannes press conference, Shizuka Ishibashi who plays Yuri said she believes her character “finds it difficult to find her way in life. She’s a bit lost. For the sake of kindness, she ranks others first and is racked with doubts, unsure about her life.” Though more passive early in the film, Yuri becomes more active as events progress, a change Ishibashi felt it important to convey.
Also at the press conference, writer/director Fukada explained the context for Yuri and Yoriko “finding each other again.” Providing cultural details, he clarified that “in Japan, a divorced woman does not see the relatives of her divorced husband. So this in Japan is unique.” Fukada elaborated, “I try to show the society in which I live. It’s a patriarchy.” Inspired by the play Tokyo Notes, upon traveling to Nagi, he says he “realized sexual minorities apparently not there. Homosexuality is not legally allowed in Japan, and this lets people hide.” He wanted “to give substance to these individuals and put them on the screen, their homosexuality itself a trait among others, i.e. just people who belong to this queer community.” Indeed, through Yuri and Yoriko whose attraction to each other remains implicitly expressed and Kaita and Haruki who explicitly declare their love, Fukada represents two possibilities. He endorses the ambiguity, believing “we never really know how people in your life are feeling. In real life people remain enigmatic.” In that regard, throughout Nagi Notes, art plays a major role, and for Fukada, “What interests me is the process of creation, art as a very personal expression.” He finds that “it is hard to know what a person is thinking, but we can explain ourselves through art, express yourself through art.” Having found Nagi a quiet, gentle place to find peace and, yes, perhaps oneself, Fukada succeeds in creating his own consummate artistic expression. In competition at Cannes for the Palme d’Or, Nagi Notes is in Japanese with English subtitles.
