Miwa Nishikawa

Nishikawa's next film, Dreams for Sale, about a young couple engaged in a marriage fraud scheme, was released in Japan in September 2012 and was shown at various international film festivals including the Toronto International Film Festival, the Chicago International Film Festival and at the Japan Society of New York. Nishikawa travelled to San Francisco for the film's screening at the first Japan Film Festival in San Francisco in August 2013. At an interview there she lamented the state of the Japanese film industry saying that it was boring because "nobody wants to embark on a venture."

After directing a segment in the omnibus work Fiimeiru, Nishikawa wrote and directed her second feature film Sway in 2006. The film brought Nishikawa both the Best Screenplay and Best Director awards at the 28th Yokohama Film Festival and the film won First Place Best Film at the festival. In 2009, she directed her third full-length film Dear Doctor and also wrote the screenplay which she adapted from her own novel. Nishikawa won the Best Screenplay award at the 31st Yokohama Film Festival where Dear Doctor took the Best Film Award. She also took the Best Director award at the 2009 Hochi Film Awards.

Director and Screenwriter of this film; Nishikawa, with the help of distribution companies: Bandai Visual, Eisei Gekijo, Engine Film and TV Man Union, presents her second feature film. Sway is representative of Nishikawa's likeness of the pre-straight-to-video salad days of Japanese Cinema. The Japanese film, which stars Odagiri Jo and opened on only six screens in South Korea in August 2006, set the record for an "independent" movie by pulling 300,000 admissions in only fifteen days. Playboy Photographer Yakeru Hayakawa reluctantly returns to his family's rural home for his mother's funeral. Barely anything has changed; he is still the spoiled brat, the father is still a bully, the pushover brother Minoru is still working at the gas station and Hayakawa's Ex, Chieko, is still available. The short-lived reunion sparks the affection of the brothers creating a romantic rivalry. Visiting their childhood romping ground of Hasumi Gorge, the tension gives way to confrontation on an old rickety rope bridge. Chieko favours the glitzy Hayakawa over Minoru, who pleads with her to reconsider. Chieko falters in her footing, not in her resolve. It is unclear if Chieko fell to her death or if she was pushed. In the following court case, the innocence and character of each brother stands trial leaving only one behind bars.

Aside from Nishikawa's film career, her writing has expanded to the world of literature. In 2006 her second feature film, Yureru (Sway), was showcased in the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes; she received the Yomiuri Prize for Literature (Drama & Film) for the script, and subsequently made her publishing debut by novelizing the work. Her 2009 collection of stories Kinō no Kamisama (Gods of Yesterday) was shortlisted for the Naoki Prize, and her 2015 novel Nagai iiwake (The Long Excuse) became a candidate for the Yamamoto Shūgorō Prize.

Nishikawa began her film career as a college student working as a staff member on Hirokazu Koreeda's 1998 film After Life. Soon afterward she was an assistant director for Yoshimitsu Morita on his 1999 thriller The Black House (黒い家 , Kuroi ie) . She once again worked for Koreeda as an assistant director on his 2001 movie Distance, and when Nishikawa went on to write and direct her first feature film, the September 2003 release, Wild Berries, Koreeda was the producer. The film won the Best New Director award at the 2004 Yokohama Film Festival, the Best New Director prize at the 13th Japanese Professional Movie Awards and the Best Screenplay Award and one of the Sponichi Grand Prize New Talent Awards at the 58th Mainichi Film Concours for 2003.

Miwa Nishikawa (西川美和 , Nishikawa Miwa, born July 8, 1974 in Asaminami-ku, Hiroshima) is a Japanese director and screenwriter. Nishikawa has received a degree in literature at the University of Waseda. After working on several independent films as well as catching the eye of Hirokazu Kore’eda, her film making career set off with her first film, Wild Berries, winning the award for best screenplay at the Mainichi Film Award. In addition to her film making career, Nishikawa has also written a book titled The Long Excuse.