Noémie Nakai

Noémie Nakai was born on December 2, 1990, in Tokyo, Japan. She has a French mother and a Japanese father.^[2] She took acting lessons when she was very young in France, and arrived by chance in modeling by shooting for advertisements in order to follow her friends. In 2013, she got her first real acting role in the drama Shûden Bye Bye [ja].^[3] Nakai is a graduate of the Lycée International de Saint-Germain-en-Laye in France and Keio University in Japan. She also studied at the University of Nottingham in England.

In 2015, she built her reputation for her role as Christine Robbins in the second season of Mischievous Kiss: Love in Tokyo.

On the eve of her thirties, she won the Busan Award in October 2019 as a director in the Asian Project Market section (co-production platform allowing emerging directors to meet market professionals on an international level) of the Busan International Film Festival for the Topography of Solitude project.^[4]

Her short film Tears Teacher spotted at the Hot Docs Festival was acquired by the Op Docs section of The New York Times.^[5][6] This ten-minute documentary is dedicated to Hidefumi Yoshida, a teacher who has been a tear therapy practitioner since 2015, who organizes meetings where men and women cry bitterly and anonymously write down painful episodes of their lives. “Emotional outbursts” are frowned upon in Japan.^[5] Tears Teacher was selected in the short documentary category of the 2021 Sundance Festival available for streaming on the New York Times website.^[7]

In 2022, Noémie Nakai played Luna in Tokyo Vice, a television series for HBO Max, the first episode of which is directed by Michael Mann.^[5][1][8]

In 2018, Nakai moved to London to pursue director opportunities and splits her time between England and Japan.^[9]

Noémie Nakai starred in a dozen films and TV series.^[1]