In October 2015, Japanese actress Kaori Momoi revealed details of her second directorial effort “火 Hee” at the Kyoto International Film Festival. Presenting a documentary about how the feature was made, she told ARTINFO about the decision to film it all in her own house. “we didn’t have any money! And we didn’t have time. So it was the best way. So it was a beautiful drive to the studio!”Now it has been announced that the movie will have its world premiere screening at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival, taking place from February 11 through 21. Screen in the 2016 Forum section, “火 Hee” is based on author Fuminori Nakamura’s Akutagawa Prize-winning short story of the same name. Filmed in ten days in Momoi’s LA house, it sees Momoi play the lead role as Azusa, an aging prostitute.She encounters a psychiatrist Dr. Sanada, whom she had met many years before. While visiting his clinic she reveals her troubled life story, the doctor seeing himself mirrored in the many men of her life, as she divulges increasingly surprising secrets.The film is produced by Kazuyoshi Okuyama of Yoshimoto Kogyo, whose credits include the 1997 Palme d'Or winner “The Eel” by Shohei Imamura and “Sonatine” by “Beat” Takeshi Kitano.Momoi previously directed “Faces of a Fig Tree” which picked up the 2007 NETPAC prize in Berlin, as well as four other awards as it screened at 11 eleven international film festivals.Momoi also appears in German film maker Doris Dörrie’s “Fukushima, mon Amour” to be screened in the Panorama section of this year’s festival. “When I read Fuminori Nakamura's original story, for some reason the first thing that came to mind was the image of a female death row prisoner who keeps talking to pictures she drew on the walls of her prison cell,” said Kaori Momoi. “The woman in this film just talks and talks. Without trusting anybody, and with no reason for her to speak, she says things without any value. As she alone moves closer to the truth, she becomes a pitiful figure. However, she’s in some sense enviable, and could be viewed as a fighter.”A respected and sometimes controversial figure in Japanese cinema, Momoi is the most awarded Japanese actress of all time, appearing in international films including Rob Marshall’s “Memoirs of a Geish”a, Alexandr Sokurov’s “The Sun,” and Maris Martinsons’ “Amaya.” She outspokenly criticized the state of Japanese cinema when speaking to ARTINFO in 2013.
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