Kira Yanagi is a senior majoring in Rhetoric, Film, and Screen Studies at Bates College. Outside of academics, she is a multimedia artist that works with not only traditional drawing/painting, but also animation, poetry, photography, crafting, and exhibition design. During the summer of 2025, Kira hosted her first solo exhibition in Tokyo, which attracted over 700 people over 2 days. She anticipates hosting more exhibitions in the future. After graduation, she will become an art exhibition director at a Tokyo-based international art collective that owns venues all around the world. Her interest in film and art was ignited at a very young age. Born in the States as a first-generation Japanese-American, she experienced language and cultural barriers and quickly recognized the power of visual art to communicate different realities. For the Bates Film Festival, she is committed to creating a space where people from different backgrounds can explore, experience, and think about the realities that artists create.