Connecting with Film Producer and Alumna Yoko Kohmoto

Film producer Yoko Kohmoto (C18) hopes to stand out for standing up.

The former Northwestern communication studies major, a current member of Dean E. Patrick Johnson’s Board of Advisors, and the force behind several films making the festival circuit is pulling focus on good stories—but more pointedly, the voices telling them.

“The thing I’m most proud of in my producing work is that I’m aimed at putting people first,” she says from her flat in London. “I think a lot of times in this industry—in a lot of industries—we forget we’re working with real people.”

Just two years out from getting her MFA in filmmaking from Columbia University, Kohmoto is juggling multiple projects: two shorts, Clean Slate and Kisses and Bullets, which screened at Aspen Shortsfest and the Tribeca Film Festival, respectively; an upcoming Sundance Institute-backed coming-of-age short called Today and Tomorrow; a feature-length experimental documentary called Waking Up In A Dream; and a comedy currently in post-production called Human Theories. That one, she notes, is chock-full of Northwestern talent. Other exciting projects are in the pipeline.

But a running theme in all Kohmoto’s current projects is the idea of connection: two East Asian nonbinary actors and best friends who are constantly mistaken for one another (Clean Slate); two women, one in New York and one in Tehran, joined in their passion for social justice (Kisses and Bullets); a series of comically tragic attempts at connection (Human Theories); and personal dispatches from real Brooklynites about life and death (Waking Up In A Dream); and a coming-of-age love story about friends becoming something more (Today and Tomorrow).  

But connection is also essential for Kohmoto as a producer and, more recently, a writer.  

“I’m excited about finding good people to work with,” she says, “filmmakers who are good people who are telling good stories that we haven't gotten to see—that I've always wanted to see on screen.”

As a communication studies major at Northwestern, Kohmoto immersed herself in digital media, taking special interest in human-computer interaction and social media as a tool to build community. Now a filmmaker, she aims to create creative communities where all the stakeholders involved, from the writers to the actors, have the support they need.

“For instance, when you're asking a writer to write something that is digging into past traumas without really caring for them or pushing them for deadlines that don't allow space for rest and recovery,” she says. “This idea of ‘safety’ for me can look like anything from physical safety to feeling safe to be yourself on set and your identity being welcomed…and I think that's what does make me, unfortunately, unique right now as a producer—a lot of times those conversations go unspoken.”

The irony in all this connection is Kohmoto’s current state of disconnection. Due to complications with her Japanese citizenship, and various moves following her time at Northwestern, Kohmoto is now residing in London while she navigates an eventual return to the US, where most of her projects are based.

“It does allow me to focus,” she says of the time difference, noting her generally email-free mornings. “And I do think there will be long-term benefits to this as I aim to work across countries and meet collaborators.”

But New York is where she considers home—and where new connections await.

“(People) are what drives me,” she says. “My goal is to hold that close and let it show in the work that comes out.”