Eureka Entertainment will release Naomi Kawase’s award-winning film, The Mourning Forest in a dual format blu-ray and DVD set on August 21st (you can order it on Amazon). It is released as part of The Masters of Cinema Series and Naomi Kawase has certainly earned that title since she is a stalwart of the festival circuit and has won many awards. Here are the details on the film:
Mourning Forest 
殯の森 「Mogari no Mori」
Running Time: 97 mins.
Release Date: June 23rd , 2007
Director: Naomi Kawase
Writer: Naomi Kawase (Screenplay),
Starring: Machiko Ono, Makiko Watanabe, Shigeki Uda, Yoichiro Saito, Yusei Yamamoto, Shigeki Uda,
Naomi Kawase is a native of Nara and most of her films are either autobiographical as they touch on her turbulent early life living with a great-aunt after her mother and father split, or connected to Nara and the surrounding region in some way. She became the youngest winner of the Caméra d’Or award which is given to best new directors at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival for her first 35mm film and ten years later, she returned to Cannes and won the Grand Prix for The Mourning Forest.
As mentioned previously, she is a regular fixture of the film festival circuit and one of the few women to be regularly seen amongst the likes of Michael Haneke and others. Her latest film, Radiance, was at Cannes 2017 and will be seen at Toronto 2017.
Synopsis from Masters of Cinema: Machiko (Machiko Ono) is a young nurse who still carries the burden of her young son’s death. Shigeki (Shigeki Uda) is an elderly widower and a resident at the nursing home where Machiko works. After celebrating Shigeki’s birthday, Machiko takes him for a drive in the countryside, but their car breaks down and Shigeki absconds into the nearby forest. Machiko has no choice but to follow, and they become lost in the dense woodlands, before their fates eventually become entwined.
Drawing comparisons to Shohei Imamura (particularly his Palme d’Or winning The Ballad of Narayama) and Terence Malick, Naomi Kawase’s The Mourning Forest is a hauntingly beautiful, symbolically rich masterpiece, and The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present the film for the first time ever on Blu-ray, in a special Dual Format edition.
