Director / Other

Umi Ishihara

石原海

London · Kitakyushu / Tokyo, UK / Japan

Artist and film director working between London and Japan. Experimental narrative films and video installations connecting personal memory with social reality, focused on communities outside the dominant social structure, often made with non-professional actors and local residents. First features The Garden Apartment and The Pioneer premiered at International Film Festival Rotterdam 2019; short Janitor of Lunacy was funded by the BFI, broadcast by the BBC and selected for Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2019. Feature documentary Light of Gravity: A Record of Prayer, a year with nine people who gather at a Kitakyushu church, including former rough sleepers and a former yakuza, building a Bible play together, screened at Image Forum, Shibuya. Shown at Centre Pompidou’s Hors Pistes Tokyo, CPH:DOX and iffr; solo exhibitions at Shiseido Gallery (2021) and Gasworks, London (2026). Directed Nike’s IWD film in Japan through Twin Brains Films.