Chie Hayakawa

Chie Hayakawa stepped right onto the world stage and rattled everyone in the room. Her debut feature, Plan 75, took a cold, hard look at an aging society with a plot about government-sponsored euthanasia. It wasn't loud or flashy. It was quiet, devastating, and impossible to look away from, which is why Cannes gave her a standing ovation and a major prize right out of the gate.

She didn't take the standard film school route straight out of school either. Hayakawa studied photography in New York, worked corporate jobs, raised kids, and came back to cinema on her own terms in her late thirties. Now she's one of the sharpest new voices in international cinema, proving you don't need pyrotechnics to stop critics in their tracks.