Forum audiences know Nao Yoshigai as the shadowy figure from Kaori Oda‘s Underground (2025), a young woman as a medium between two realms: everyday kitchen gestures and haptic explorations of caves and the past. In her directorial debut, this artistic all-rounder uses a similar hybrid form to confront her soul and inner life – and with it the universal questions of life and death, stories and images, materiality and spirituality. Following her mother’s passing, she seeks refuge and calm in a Zen temple to physically and mentally process what has engulfed her completely, paralysed her, stopped her in her tracks: her grief. In these Zen Buddhist surroundings, she learns to move her attention away from a human-centred perspective and on to the small hand movements and gestures, objects and rituals that make each single grain of rice a sensation. What in philosophy might be deemed an experience of transcendence is portrayed by Yoshigai with humour and sensual grace: she augments the retreat with family photos, performances and hand-drawn animations, from the rumbling stomach to the intestinal tract – and back to humility, acceptance, liberation. A moving three-acter without a story!