Kohei Kadowaki is an animation artist and director whose debut feature 'We Are Aliens' premiered at Cannes' Directors' Fortnight and screens at Annecy, and he is judging the final round of the OPALIS nationwide audition.
Kohei Kadowaki's debut feature 'We Are Aliens' premiered at Cannes' Directors' Fortnight and screens at Annecy. The film follows two boys over 20 years and uses a hybrid rotoscoping approach developed over five years with a mostly inexperienced animation team. Kadowaki said the technique was driven by empathy and a need to capture childlike gestures with an untrained crew, defining the visual language of the film.
Days before the Annecy screening, Kadowaki was announced as a judge for the OPALIS project's second-phase nationwide audition. The talent discovery project, a collaboration between Ten Carat and Music Ray'n, opened the audition on June 24, 2026. Kadowaki joins film director Rikiya Imaizumi on the judging panel for the final round. Successful candidates receive free training in acting, voice, dance, and other disciplines, plus observation opportunities at productions involving the agencies' talents.
The two stories establish Kadowaki as a director with a completed debut feature that has already premiered at a major festival, and as an animation artist involved in a talent search for hybrid performers across acting and voice acting. No further projects or future plans beyond these two activities are stated in the available coverage.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the cited Yomimono stories below, each itself sourced, then editorially reviewed. Every fact links the story it came from.
Structured graph also available as JSON at /public/entities/kohei-kadowaki.
CC BY 4.0.
Director Kohei Kadowaki discusses his debut feature 'We Are Aliens,' which premiered at Cannes' Directors' Fortnight and screens at Annecy. The film follows two boys over 20 years and uses a hybrid rotoscoping approach to capture natural movement, developed over five years with a mostly inexperienced animation team.
The OPALIS talent discovery project, a collaboration between Ten Carat and Music Ray'n, has launched its second-phase nationwide audition. Film director Rikiya Imaizumi and animation artist Kohei Kadokawa will judge the final round. Successful candidates receive free training in acting, voice, dance, and more, plus observation opportunities at productions involving the agencies' talents.