Naomi Kawase to Head Doha Film Festival Jury

By Tom Whitfield

Naomi Kawase, the Japanese director who won the Caméra d'Or at Cannes for "Moe no Suzaku" (1997), will preside over the main competition jury of the Doha Film Festival, running Nov. 19-27 in the Qatari capital.

The announcement, made by the Doha Film Institute, places one of Japan's best-known female directors at the head of a jury for the second edition of a festival that has been deliberately rebuilt for a wider international profile. Kawase is no stranger to Doha: she joined the institute's Qumra mentorship program for emerging filmmakers in 2016.

Who sits on the jury with her?

The DFI has assembled a five-member panel:

• Adam Bessa, the rapidly emerging French-Tunisian actor seen in "Ghost Trail"
• Dora Bouchoucha, the pioneering Tunisian producer
• Gianfranco Rosi, the award-winning Italian documentarian behind "Fire at Sea"
• Kamal Aljafari, the prominent Palestinian filmmaker of "With Hasan in Gaza"

The mix is regional as much as it is international. Three of the four members alongside Kawase come from the Arab world or its diasporas, which fits the festival's positioning but also narrows the jury's center of gravity toward Middle East and North African cinema. What the lineup does not include, notably, is a critic or programmer — the jury is made up entirely of directors, producers and actors.

What is Kawase's track record?

Her credentials are not in dispute. Beyond the Caméra d'Or for "Moe no Suzaku," she won Cannes awards for "Mogari no Mori" (2007) and "Hikari" (2017). Her film "Hotaru" took the FIPRESCI prize at Locarno in 2000. Her latest feature, "Yakushima's Illusion," premiered in competition at Locarno in 2025. She has judged before, too, serving on the 2013 Cannes competition jury. Kawase remains based in her hometown of Nara, Japan.

Doha Film Institute CEO Fatma Hassan Alremaihi framed the appointments in terms of loyalty to the institute's mission. "We are immensely proud to welcome friends of the Institute who share our vision and have dedicated their lives to nurturing independent cinema," Alremaihi said in a statement. "Their collective experience and artistic integrity embody the spirit of DFI and DFF: championing original voices, creating space for bold ideas and ensuring that powerful stories find their way to audiences around the world."

The language is warm. It is also vague — the statement says nothing about how many films the jury will judge, the selection criteria, or whether the competition sections have grown since the festival's first edition.

What does this change for the festival itself?

The revamped Doha Film Festival absorbed the DFI's Ajyal Film Festival, which was dedicated to youth and family-friendly cinema, and repositioned it as a more ambitious international event. That shift now has money behind it. The top prizes on offer are:

• Best narrative: $75,000
• Best documentary: $50,000
• Artistic achievement: $45,000
• Gender-neutral performance acting award: $15,000

The acting prize's gender-neutral format aligns Doha with a small group of festivals that have abandoned separate male and female acting categories.

As previously announced, the in-competition opener will be Yemeni-Scottish filmmaker Sara Ishaq's "The Station," a drama examining the impact of Yemen's civil war on the country — a choice that signals the festival intends to keep regional conflict on screen even as it courts a broader audience.

The festival's key partners, besides the Doha Film Institute, are Katara, Media City Qatar – Film Committee, and Visit Qatar. State tourism backing of a jury led by a Cannes laureate is the clearest sign yet that Qatar intends the second edition to compete for attention on the international festival circuit — whether it does depends on the films, not the jurors.