ReviewCannes 2026: Nagi Notes movie review – Koji Fukada ponders the meaning of art in wartime
Featuring nuanced performances and beautiful camerawork, Nagi Notes asks what art should mean in the chaotic world we live in
4/5 stars
With a story driven by beautifully restrained emotions and conversations steeped in philosophical queries about the meaning and significance of art, the Franco-Japanese co-production Nagi Notes combines the best of the two cinematic worlds it was born out of.
Playing in the Cannes Film Festival’s main competition, Nagi Notes is based on Japanese playwright Oriza Hirata’s Tokyo Notes, a play revolving around 20 characters sitting in a museum hall talking about their lives while a devastating war rages in faraway Europe.
In Fukada’s very loose adaptation of the 1994 play – which retains only two of the original characters and removes the spatial confines in Hirata’s Beckett-ish narrative – war and its imitations are also omnipresent.
On television, they see the devastation in Ukraine; up close, they contend with military trucks rumbling past their homes and the constant boom of regular drills taking place at a nearby training camp.