Miami Film Festival is proud to present its prestigious Precious Gem Award to the immensely talented filmmaker Ryûsuke Hamaguchi.
The virtual presentation will take place prior to the Variety 2022 International Feature Film Nominees Roundtable on Thursday, March 10 at 6:45pm.
Ryûsuke Hamaguchi became the face of a new wave of Japanese cinema in 2021 with two outstanding films – Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, which won the Jury Grand Prize at Berlin Film Festival and Drive My Car, which won Best Screenplay at Cannes and went on to become the first Japanese film ever to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. Drive My Car has been nominated for 4 Oscars in total, including Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best International Feature Film.
Hamaguchi’s films resonate with layers of meaning and subtext. Dialogue, sound, gestures and looks between characters speak on the surface level of plot while simultaneously whispering to deeper emotions, both subconsciously and subtextually.
Hamaguchi has risen to the level of a master of cinema with a unique style at still a relatively young age. His debut on the international stage came in 2008 when his Tokyo University of the Arts graduation film _Passion _debuted at the San Sebastian and Tokyo film festivals. After some additional narrative and documentary features, Hamaguchi received serious international attention for his 317-minute Happy Hour, which world premiered at the Locarno Film Festival in 2015. In Happy Hour, he experimented with improvisational acting workshops that provided an early demonstration of his methods for building complex characters and performance.
For his next film, Asako I & II, Hamaguchi was invited to the Official Competition at Cannes Film Festival in 2018.
In addition to the success at the Oscars and Cannes for Drive My Car, the film has additionally been awarded Best Feature Film and Best Screenplay at the 2021 Asia Pacific Screen Awards, Best Film at the 2021 Gotham Awards, Best Film at both the 2021 New York Critics Circle Awards and the 2021 Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards, as well as winning Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Director and Best Screenplay at the 2022 National Society of Film Critics Awards.
