Koji Fukada

Born in Tokyo, Fukada had a father who was a film aficionado and he watched many films on VHS when he was young. When he was 19 years old studying at Taisho University and discovered the Film School of Tokyo, he began taking evening classes in filmmaking. One of his teachers was Kiyoshi Kurosawa. He made his first feature-length film, The Chair, in 2002. He joined the Seinendan theater troupe, headed by Oriza Hirata, in 2005, and has often used their work and their actors in his films.

His film Hospitalité won Best Picture in the Japanese Eyes competition of the Tokyo International Film Festival in 2010. Au revoir l'été won the grand prize and the prize of the young jury at the Three Continents Festival in 2013 and his 2016 film Harmonium won the Prix du Jury in the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival.