Genpin

Naomi Kawase's documentary is set in a maternity clinic in the forest near Okazaki. Doctor Tadashi Yoshimura argues there for birth without intervention, and the women prepare over months: they walk, they chop wood, they try to learn their own bodies. The film is neither a promotion nor a critique; it relays the clinic's case and shows the births themselves in long, distanced takes. The connection Kawase draws between nature and the body becomes a thesis here, though it is equally clear that no opposing view is given room. Silence, trees and breathing are its main material. In the birth scenes the camera neither retreats nor puts anything on display.