Filmmaker/film director. Director Kosai Sekine’s sophisticated and witty sensibility is evident throughout all his work. His outsized creativity and storytelling stand poised at the crest of a new wave of branded and interactive content in Japan’s creative community, from feature films to short films, tvcs, music videos, and art installations.

He was born and raised in Tokyo with both parents in the modeling art field. During his university years at Sofia‘s Department of Philosophy, he took on an exchange program in the US, where his interest in photography flourished. That was when he wanted to become a filmmaker. After obtaining his degree, he started working at an advertising film production company as a production assistant.

Sekine made his debut in 2005 with the much-talked-about “Right Place”, which won him a Best Foreign Film in New York Short Film Festival. In the following year, he won the Young Director Grand Prix award at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity along with 3 Golds for his trailer he directed for the Raindance Film Festival. Furthermore, he ranked no 1 in the world by shot’s Young Directors Award.

In 2008, he earned his reputation by directing numerous short films, tvcs, and music videos nationally and internationally. He joined Stink: a film production company that houses various offices throughout the world. In 2014, he won the Cannes Lions Titanium Grand Prix with “Sound of Honda / Ayrton Senna 1984”, which became the most award-winning advertising film in a single year, in the world.

In 2018, he directed his first feature film, “Love, At Least” (Ikiterudakede Ai), based on the best-selling novel by Yukiko Motoya, about a girl with hypersomnia and her struggles in life. He won Silver at Shindo Kaneto Young Directors Award as well as Jury Award at Kinotayo Film Festival in France. In the same year, he released his feature-length documentary film “Tower of the Sun”(Taiyo-no-Tou). It depicts Japan’s long-term structural problem, which has been in dispute since the Osaka Expo.

Sekine released two films again in 2024 – “Stay Mum”(Kakushigoto) is a narrative feature, a profound interrogation of the plausibility of escaping one’s past, the nature of family, and the justness of deception. An Watanabe played a woman with an unbearable past who faces to her father suffering from dementia and hides an abused boy. The other documentary feature “Dust to Dust” (Moeru-dress wo Tsumuide) is the story of Yuima Nakazato – only Japanese fashion designer who joins Paris Haute Couture Week traveled through fashion waste mountain in Kenya to Tokyo, Paris to reimagine future of fashion. The film is the recipient of the 2024 Human/Nature Award in Tribeca Film Festival, a prize established to amplify a film that best exemplifies solution-oriented environmental storytelling.

Along with his feature films and various projects, Sekine has been active with his social engagement art collective, “NOddIN”. He has been creating art with social themes.