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When memory slips away, what do we know to be real anymore?

That’s the question asked by “Great Absence,” a new film that sees legendary Japanese actor Tatsuya Fuji return to the big screen in a father-son drama about life, death, mortality, and morality. Filmmaker Kei Chika-ura writes and directs the feature which centers on a rekindled family amid an Alzheimers diagnosis and a suicide.

The official synopsis reads: Distanced from his father Yohji (Tatsuya Fuji) for twenty years, actor Takashi (Mirai Moriyama) is brought back home by a jarring police call. Yohji has disconnected from reality due to dementia, and his second wife Naomi (Hideko Hara) is missing. Asked where she is, the old man replies that she committed suicide. While trying to find out about the stepmother, Takashi traces the past of Yohji he has never been able to accept. And since Yohji abandoned his family 20 years ago for Naomi,...

With four TV and film projects in as many years, few filmmakers right now are more prolific than Hirokazu Kore-eda.

The veteran Japanese filmmaker behind titles like the Palme d’Or-winning Shoplifters and Still Walking continued his hot streak after landing his third directing honor from the Asian Academy Sunday night for his last feature, Monster. Last night’s win was Kore-eda’s second consecutive Best Director win at the Asian Film Awards after nabbing the gong with the Korean-language Broker in 2023.

“I’m in a really good spot right now,” Kore-eda told Deadline shortly before picking up the award on Sunday. “I’m not forcing myself at all. I’m constantly working. I have good stamina.” The filmmaker told us that he has no intentions of slowing down.

“I’m currently working on a streaming drama I shot last autumn. I’m in the editing phase for that now,...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For regular updates, sign up for our weekly email newsletter and follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSHard Truths.Mike Leigh’s forthcoming Hard Truths will reunite him with Marianne Jean-Baptiste, star of Secrets and Lies (1996). It will be the British director’s first film set in the present day since Another Year (2010).Jia Zhangke has divulged some details of We Shall Be All, now in the early stages of post-production. In production off and on since 2001, the film will be his first feature since Ash Is Purest White (2018). “I travelled with actors and a cameraman to shoot, without a script, without any obvious story,” the director told Variety. “This is a work of fiction, but I have applied many documentary methods.”Robert Bresson’s rarely seen Four Nights of a Dreamer is being restored by MK2 Films, set for a spring release.

As part of the Aca Cinema Project––”an ongoing initiative fostered by the Government of Japan to increase awareness and appreciation of Japanese films and filmmakers in the United States”––Japan Society will run “Family Portrait: Japanese Family in Flux” from February 15-24. A mix of American premieres and repertory showings, this series puts “bonds of the Japanese family” front and center to “both celebrate these traditions as well as call into question their reality and relevance in our quickly changing modern world.”

U.S. premieres include Kazuyoshi Kumakiri’s Yoko, starring Rinko Kikuchi, and Keiko Tsuruoka’s Tsugaru Lacquer Girl. A special spotlight is given to Ryota Nakano, whose A Long Goodbye and exquisitely titled Her Love Boils Bathwater will be making New York debuts; his 2020 feature The Asadas also plays.

Repertory screenings will be held for Kohei Oguri’s Muddy River, Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Tokyo Sonata, Kore-eda’s Still Walking,...

Memories, intangible as they are, fade into the dark. As the ravages of time and progress march ever forward at such frenetic speeds, memory and identity risk such a whimpering fate. With the passing of generations, those memories chance survival in history books, in artifacts, in inaccessible stock footage and photographs, themselves doomed to be forgotten by the many. The crises at the heart of Kim Min-ju's ‘A Letter From Kyoto', riddled with secrets and dishonesty, speak from personal to national levels of identity, community, and a need for compassion for one another. A deep, meditative breath away from the breakneck velocity of globalisation, Kim's film is an empathetic snapshot of a family, and a country, in a state of flux.

A Letter from Kyoto is screening at London Korean Film Festival

After being confronted by various setbacks in Seoul, struggling writer Hye-young (Han Seon-hwa) returns to her Yeongdo hometown,...

Exclusive: UTA has signed Hirokazu Kore-eda, the internationally celebrated Japanese filmmaker known for titles like Monster and Shoplifters, for representation in all areas.

The deal is particularly significant, Deadline hears, as the agency continues to expand its presence in Japan, and throughout Asia more broadly. Kore-eda will work closely going forward with UTA’s Asia Business Development division, which looks to amplify Asian and Asian-American voices by creating and curating a diverse array of opportunities, between Hollywood and Asia, for clients, partner companies, and brands.

Kore-eda’s most recent feature, Monster, had its North American premiere at the 2023 Toronto Film Festival after world premiering in Cannes, where it was awarded the Queer Palm and the prize for Best Screenplay. The film penned by Yuji Sakamoto watches as a mother confronts her young son’s teacher after she notices him acting strangely. Sakura Andō, Eita Nagayama, and Sōya Kurokawa star.

Kore-eda...

Editor’s note: This review was originally published at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival. Well Go USA releases the film in theaters on Wednesday, November 22.

Scary as it sounds, “monster” can be such a strangely comforting word. Not only does classifying someone as inhuman absolve us from acknowledging the most difficult aspects of our shared humanity, it also reaffirms the smallness and simplicity of an infinitely complex universe that continues to expand no matter how much we might want to wrap our arms around it. “Monster” is a period at the end of a sentence; it’s the permission we give ourselves to demonize whatever we don’t understand.

And, for all of those reasons, it’s also a very unexpected title for a new feature by the great Hirokazu Kore-eda, whose achingly humanistic stories of families lost and found have never had any use for such a stiflingly judgmental term.

‘Decision To Leave’ won three and Hirokazu Kore-eda named best director.

The Asian Film Awards (Afa) celebrated its comeback edition in Hong Kong tonight (March 12) and named Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car best film.

The Japanese film, which premiered at Cannes in 2021 and won best international feature at last year’s Oscars, won a further two awards at the AFAs: best editing for Azusa Yamazaki and best original music by Eiko Ishibashi.

Scroll down for full list of winners

Park Chan-wook’s Decision To Leave went into the night as the favourite, with a leading 10 nominations for the South Korean film,...

The actor is known for roles in Hirokazu Kore-eda’s ‘Still Walking’ and ‘After the Storm’ among others.

Japanese actor Hiroshi Abe is to be honoured with the Excellence in Asian Cinema Award at the 16th Asian Film Awards in Hong Kong next month.

The actor is known internationally for roles in Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Still Walking and After The Storm, and Hideki Takeuchi’s Thermæ Romæ, for which he won his first Japan Academy Film Prize in 2013.

Abe will accept the award at the awards ceremony, which is set to be held in Hong Kong on March 12. The nominations were announced last month.

“Au Revoir l’Été” by Kôji Fukada is a little gem of a movie, simple and yet multilayered and visually enchanting. It is a story of transition to adulthood, the Japanese title “Hotori no Sakuko” can be translated “Sakuko on the edge” and this is exactly it.

“Au Revoir l’Été” is screening at Vesoul International Film Festival of Asian Cinema

Sakuko (Fumi Nakaido) is a 18 year old student who has just failed the University entrance exam and is going for a short holiday to a small seaside resort with her aunt Mikie (Mayu Tsuruta). They are both looking to get some quiet and constructive time out of this holiday; Sakuko needs to study and prepare for her next session of exams and Mikie is working on a translation. At the resort, we get to know Ukichi, Mikie’s ex lover, who runs a hotel in town, his student daughter...

The Osaka Asian Film Festival (Oaff) 2022 announced its program outline on January 31, 2022.

Event Outline

The Oaff aims to facilitate human resources development and exchange, to invigorate the Osaka economy, and to increase the city’s appeal, through providing opportunities to watch excellent Asian films, supporting filmmaking in Osaka and attracting filmmakers from Asian countries and regions to Osaka. Promoting Osaka worldwide as a gateway city for Asian films, and engaging with many people from the fields of culture, art, education, tourism and business, from Osaka and all of Asia, Oaff works as an open platform to contribute to the development of Osaka and cinema.

Marking its 17th edition this year and under programming director Teruoka Sozo, Oaff will again select high-quality Asian films. The Competition section, which receives increased recognition every year, will again select films previously unreleased in Japan. The Indie Forum section, special programs and other sections will...

Photo: 'Shoplifters'/Gaga Pictures The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the tomb; This is the emotional thesis of Hirokazu Kore-eda’s heartfelt drama Shoplifters. In film and television, it is the commercial choice to portray the nuclear family with outside struggles, but Shoplifters is the quietly nurtured beginnings of a family that isn’t really family at all. The first Japanese film to win the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival since 1997, Shoplifters was both written and directed by the acclaimed Hirokazu Kore-eda and now is viewed as his most successful film, even with movies like Still Walking and Like Father, Like Son under his entirely impressive belt. Osamu and his wife Nobuyo live with their young son, Shota, and Nobuyo’s sister Aki under their mother’s strained roof. All holding down odd jobs, the six family members do what they can...

The Hi-Pointe Theater, at 1005 McCausland Ave in St. Louis, is the best place to see movies. Catherine Deneuve and Juliette Binoche in The Truth opens there Friday July 10th.

Legends of French cinema Catherine Deneuve and Juliette Binoche join masterful filmmaker Hirokazu Koreeda to paint a moving portrait of family dynamics in The Truth. Fabienne (Catherine Deneuve) is an aging French movie star who, despite her momentary lapses in memory, remains a venerable force to be reckoned with. Upon the publication of her memoirs, her daughter Lumir (Juliette Binoche) returns to Paris from New York with her husband (Ethan Hawke) and their young daughter to commemorate its release. A sharp and funny battle of wits ensues between the mother-daughter duo, as Lumir takes issue with Fabienne’s rose-colored version of the past. Reflected cleverly by Fabienne’s latest role in a sci-fi drama, their strained relationship takes a poignant journey toward possible reconciliation.

As the weather gets hotter and the film industry continues to face an uncertain future, one thing is crystal clear: There will be plenty of new movies to watch this summer — good ones, in fact — but there isn’t going to be a Summer Movie Season. In lieu of a Summer Movie Season this year, we’ve decided to program our own — the single greatest Summer Movie Season that never happened. We’ve created a release calendar that’s all killer, no filler. From action tentpoles to star-driven comedies, scream-worthy horror, indie charmers, and sophisticated imports, this dream slate captures the full spectrum of what you might have found during a trip to your local multiplex or arthouse theater on any given summer night over the last 30 years.

Parts one and two of IndieWire’s Ultimate Summer Movie Season can be found below:

— Part I: May

— Part II: June

July...

No one enjoys being forced to get along with strangers, let alone come to terms with having to live with them. The foundation of a new family, much like a funeral, collides people together with little regard for their desires but, no matter how much resistance is fought or how falsified the pleasantries, we have to accept it as a situation out of our hands and learn to make do. Much can be said about Shiro Tokiwa’s feature length debut “The First Supper”, which features both scenarios in two narrative timelines joined in spirit by the homely presence of food; while both timelines could have made for interesting viewing as separate films, this hodgepodge of a movie forces its audience through a menu of workable ingredients clumsily orchestrated into a buffet of nothingness.

“The First Supper” is screening at New York Asian Film Festival Winter Showcase 2020

Returning to their...

Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda, coming off of his Palme d’Or winner Shoplifters, is back with The Truth aka La Vérité. The opening selection at this year’s Venice Film Festival, the meta family drama stars Juliette Binoche, Catherine Deneuve, and Ethan Hawke. Picked up by IFC Films for a U.S. release this spring, the first full-length trailer has now arrived.

C.J. Prince was mixed on the film at Tiff, saying in his review, “If we want to start with the problems of Hirokazu Kore-eda’s The Truth, we can look at the title. When it’s revealed at the beginning that the title comes from the name of a character’s autobiography, it’s a cheeky meta-reference that plays into the film’s own setting of the French film industry. But soon that gives way to revealing that the whole film wants to deal with the concept of truth,...

Kore-eda Hirokazu is one of contemporary’s cinema’s canniest explorers of what lies beneath the nuclear family. Last year’s “Shoplifters” won the Cannes Palme d’Or in 2018 and was Japan’s submission to the Oscars; while it received a nomination, the film, of course, stood no chance in the shadow of “Roma.” The achingly sad, lovely “Shoplifters” shined a light on a family bound not by blood, but by the need to survive, and for human connection in the chaotic world of Tokyo’s lower class. Now, Kore-eda returns to his fabled territory of complex family dynamics, but this time with a cinephile’s dream of a triple-threat cast: Juliette Binoche, Catherine Deneuve, and Ethan Hawke. Watch the first U.S. trailer from IFC Films below.

Here’s the official synopsis: “Fabienne (Catherine Deneuve) is a star of French cinema. She reigns amongst men who love and admire her.

1st Gangneung International Film Festival, Festival Report by Jean-Marc Thérouanne Gangneung, a Town of Culture, Sports, and Tourism

The 1st edition of the Gangneung International Film Festival (Giff) took place 8 – 14 November 2019, in Gangneung, South Korea. The town itself spreads in the area of the size of Paris with only 220 000 inhabitants.

Gangneung is a seaside town at the Japanese Sea, in the Gangwon Province, and boasts with long beautiful beaches covered in white sand, bordered by pine woods of Jeongdongjin. It is an economic centre of the mountain region of Yeongdong (highest peak 1 563m).

Not far from the seaside, there is a large lake, creating a narrow strip of land with hotels welcoming summer beachgoers and festival-goers of the many cultural events or sports of this dynamic city.

Gangneung Iff, a Film Festival Dedicated to Literary Adaptations

Gangneung is the hometown of literati, such as:

writer Sin Saimdang (1504-1551), neo-Confucianism philosopher...

Exclusive: IFC Films is always a player at the Toronto Film Festival in acquiring films and launching awards-season entries — the Hirokazu Kore-eda-directed The Truth makes its North American debut here — but the company is making news of another kind. IFC has solidified its new streaming channel, IFC Films Unlimited, by expanding to Apple TV channels, both in the U.S. and Canada. The service launched in the U.S. last May, and today marks the debut of IFC Films Unlimited in Canada.

The Apple deal gives the IFC Films Ott service an important platform where customers can subscribe directly through the Apple TV app, for $5.99 per month. The streaming service launched with just over 400 films available in the U.S.

The subscription video on demand streaming channel is comprised of theatrically released titles from distribution labels IFC Films, Sundance Selects and genre label IFC Midnight. The Truth, which premiered at Venice,...

Filmmaker Kore-eda Hirokazu once predicted that his Palme d’Or-winning “Shoplifters” would come to represent a major turning point in his career — the end of one phase, and the beginning of another. As it turns out, “The Truth” is inevitably a bit more complicated.

The first movie the Japanese writer-director has made since winning the film world’s most prestigious award is also the first that he’s ever shot in another tongue or country, and that fact alone is enough to make Kore-eda’s latest feel like an outlier in any number of obvious ways; a foreign organ transplanted into an otherwise cohesive body of work. On the other hand, this wise and diaphanous little drama finds Kore-eda once again exploring his usual obsessions, as the man behind the likes of “Still Walking” and “After the Storm” offers yet another insightful look at the underlying fabric of a modern family.

As part of a program starting on 26 April 2019 the British Film Institute will present four films by Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda. The program named “Of Flesh and Blood” will include “Still Walking“, “After Life”, “Nobody Knows” and “Maborosi”. If you need information about the screenings, you can visit the BFI page.

Apart from these screenings all four films will also be released on Blu-ray as a boxset including a newly recorded interview with Kore-eda and many other extras yet to be announced. According to amazon.co.uk the set will be released on 15 July 2019.

IFC Films has acquired North American rights to “The Truth,” Hirokazu Kore-eda’s follow-up to his Oscar-nominated and Palme d’Or-winning “Shoplifters,” Variety has learned.

The deal was announced at the Berlin Film Festival and comes after an active Sundance for IFC — one in which the indie label picked up rights to the Keira Knightley thriller “Official Secrets” and Jennifer Kent’s “The Nightingale.”

“The Truth” brings together two icons of French cinema, Catherine Deneuve and Juliette Binoche, for the the first time on the big screen. It co-stars Ethan Hawke. In a bit of art imitating life, the film centers on Fabienne (Deneuve), a legendary movie star renowned for her talent and beauty. Despite her professional success, Fabienne has a strained relationship with her daughter Lumir (Binoche), a screenwriter. Things reach a boiling point after Lumir and her husband (Hawke) return to Paris and Fabienne publishes a memoir. Instead of a warm reunion,...

No matter how much you loved “Crazy Rich Asians” — that glittering Singapore-set spin on the princess movie, which charmed audiences to the tune of nearly a quarter of a billion dollars earlier this year — don’t be surprised when the Academy fails to give it a single above-the-line Oscar nomination. When that happens, it will no doubt inspire a dozen or more outraged editorials, as #OscarsSoWhite critics bemoan the lack of Asian talent among this year’s nominees.

Why wait? The time for such think pieces is now, especially since Hollywood’s tendency to snub Asian talent is hardly limited to studio projects. Just compare the history of Oscar’s foreign-language category to that of world cinema overall, where the influence of such Asian masters as John Woo, Wong Kar-wai, Jia Zhangke and Edward Yang has been ignored over the years. And if the organization doesn’t wake up and realize the bias,...

“Chosen families,” a group of people who deliberately choose one another to play important roles in each other’s lives–and a vital concept in queer communities–is the central idea of Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Shoplifters.

His Palme d’Or winner depicts the invisible (and growing) segments of industrialized societies that rely on theft to maintain lower class status. In the film, economic hardship gives way to non-family members pairing under the guise of blood ties. Each member of the chimeric Shibata family find themselves performing the role they would among their natural families. Kore-eda’s film follows what happens to this new-nuclear family when an abused local girl Yuri (Miyu Sasaki) is welcomed into the mix.

We spoke with director Kore-eda over the phone during the 56th New York Film Festival and he discusses the tsunami that hit Japan in 2011 and how it created a chasm between family and society.

When Cate Blanchett handed Kore-eda Hirokazu the Palme d’Or at Cannes in May, the “Shoplifters” director froze in place for a moment, as though paralyzed by the weight of the world’s most prestigious film award. Kore-eda had good reason to be shell-shocked. Despite emerging as the most feted Japanese filmmaker of his generation, being anointed as “Ozu’s heir” more times than he could count, and even winning the Cannes Jury Prize in 2013, Kore-eda still never thought this day would come.

The last time a film of his had been invited to screen at the festival (2016’s achingly wounded “After the Storm”), it had been relegated to the Un Certain Regard sidebar, a demotion that often anticipates a director’s irrelevance. And while Kore-eda had weathered that demotion before, his next feature — a grim murder-mystery that found him veering away from the kind of gentle family dramas that...

“Still Walking” is an important film in the career of now Palme d’Or winning director Hirokazu Koreeda. One of his strongest films to date and something of a tribute to the works of Yasujiro Ozu, his attention to detail is most evident here, finding the pace that he would find comfort with for his now established brand of cinema.

But, as important, it was also the first collaboration between him and the late Kirin Kiki, whom he would work with on a total of six films over the next decade, helping establish her as Japan’s cinematic grandmother.

On the anniversary of his death, Junpei’s family gather for their annual memorial. The eldest son, an aspiring doctor following in his father’s footsteps, coupled with the fact that he died saving a young boy’s life, paint the image of the ideal man. Fifteen years on,...

Running from 1- 14 November in London before taking highlights around the country with its annual UK Tour, the festival will feature an in-depth special focus entitled A Slice of Everyday Life, along with an exciting mix of UK and International premieres, guests and events across a diverse set of strands; Cinema Now, Women’s Voices, Indie Firepower, Contemporary Classics, Artists Video, Animation and Shorts.

Korea is regularly in the world news cycle of late due to some tense international political

machinations. This year’s festival moves from this global outlook to an intimate view of the dayto-day lives and struggles of the people of the country on the ground. The 13th London Korean Film Festival proudly presents a programme that incorporates and engages with many of the topical conversations taking place in society today, through the international language of cinema.

Highlighting the festival’s dual commitment to championing the work...

Award-winning trailblazing Japanese actress Kirin Kiki died on Sept. 15. Kiki recently appeared in Shoplifters and had been fighting cancer since being diagnosed in 2004, but the official cause of her death has yet to be announced. She was 75.

Kiki was born Keiko Nakatani in Tokyo in 1943. She started her acting career in the ’60s under the name Yuki Chihi in a theater troupe, where she met actor Shin Kishida. They would marry and then later divorce in 1968. In 1973, she married musician Yuya Uchida and they had a daughter Yayako.

She would go on to find success in TV in shows such as Shichinin no Mago (Seven Grandchildren) as well as Terauchi Kantaro Ikka (Kantaro Terauchi Family) and Jikandesuyo (It’s Time).

On the film side, she starred in Tokyo Tawa: Okan to Boku to Tokidoki Oton (Tokyo Tower: Mom and Me, and Sometimes Dad) and Chronicle of My Mother. The two...

The ’Shoplifters’ director will receive the Donostia award at the Spanish festival.

Japanese writer-director Hirokazu Kore-eda will receive the Donostia award at the 66th San Sebastian International Film Festival to be held from September 21-28.

Kore-eda will become the first Asian filmmaker to receive the honourary accolade which was created in 1986. Previous recipients include Francis Ford Coppola, Meryl Streep and Al Pacino.

The fesival honoured Ricardo Darin, Monica Bellucci and Agnès Varda last year.

Kore-eda has previously screened work nine times at San Sebastian. His films have competed four times in the official selection: After Life (1998), Hana (2006), Still Walking (2008) and...

Now in its 12th year, Japan Cuts continues to grow as the largest festival of contemporary Japanese cinema in North America. Bringing a wide range of the best and hardest-to-see films made in and around Japan today — from blockbusters, independent productions and anime, to documentaries, avant-garde works, short films, and new restorations — Japan Cuts is the place to experience Japan’s dynamic film culture in New York City. Like every year, this thrilling 10-day festival offers exclusive premieres, special guest filmmakers and stars, fun-filled parties, live music and more! Tickets are on-sale now!

The festival programmers Aiko Masubuchi, Kazu Watanabe and Joel Neville Andersonhave highlighted in a note that “perhaps most strikingly, the struggle for dignity and individual rights reverberates throughout the lineup—including Lgbtq advocacy (“Of Love & Law”), reparations for government abuse (“Sennan Asbestos Disaster”) or the plight of refugees (“Passage of Life”). Additionally, multiple films deal with the...

Even those who live in Asia may find there’s no better time and place to be a fan of their cinema than this July in New York City. A mere few days after New York Asian Film Festival concludes, the last half of the month features the return of Japan Cuts, which is dedicated to the best in Japanese cinema, and this year proves to be another stellar line-up. Featuring 28 feature-length films and 9 short films, we’re pleased to exclusively debut the trailer for the festival, which runs from July 19 through the 29 at Japan Society.

Highlights from this year’s festival include Takeshi Kitano’s crime drama sequel Outrage Coda, Naomi Kawase’s Radiance, the U.S. premiere of Shinsuke Sato’s much-anticipated live-action manga adaptation Bleach, Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s recent Berlinale premiere Yocho (Foreboding), and many more. This year’s Opening Night film is Eric Khoo’s Ramen Shop,...

“Au Revoir l’Été” by Kôji Fukada is a little gem of a movie, simple and yet multilayered and visually enchanting. It is a story of transition to adulthood, the Japanese title “Hotori no Sakuko” can be translated “Sakuko on the edge” and this is exactly it.

Sakuko (Fumi Nakaido) is a 18 year old student who has just failed the University entrance exam and is going for a short holiday to a small seaside resort with her aunt Mikie (Mayu Tsuruta). They are both looking to get some quiet and constructive time out of this holiday; Sakuko needs to study and prepare for her next session of exams and Mikie is working on a translation. At the resort, we get to know Ukichi, Mikie’s ex lover, who runs a hotel in town, his student daughter Tetsuko (Kiki Sugino) and his nephew Takashi (Taiga), a runaway survivor...

We may be getting Infinity War in a matter of weeks, but a genuine dream team-up is happening with titans of the international film industry. Juliette Binoche, who gives one of her best performances in Claire Denis‘ Let the Sunshine In coming later this month, is teaming with Catherine Deneuve for a new drama from Japanese master Hirokazu Kore-eda (After the Storm, Still Walking).

Binoche first discussed the project a few years back, telling Paris Match that Hirokazu Kore-eda had seen Clouds of Sils Maria at Cannes and “it inspired him to write a script for Catherine Deneuve, Ethan Hawke and myself.” In the film, the Umbrellas of Cherbourg star will play an actress, while Binoche will play her daughter, who is a screenwriter. Back then, the star said filming would kick off in two or three years, and it looks like Kore-eda is right on schedule as Figurants has recently shared a casting notice,...

Every week, IndieWire asks a select handful of film critics two questions and publishes the results on Monday (The answer to the second, “What is the best film in theaters right now?”, can be found at the end of this post).

This past weekend saw the release of Wes Anderson’s “Isle of Dogs,” a movie that was inspired by classic Japanese cinema (even if some feel that it may ultimately have been more informed by its director’s personal worldview).

The film is littered with references to revered old masters like Akira Kurosawa, Seijun Suzuki, etc., but movie-lovers the world over may be much less familiar with the more recent history of Japanese cinema.

This week’s question: What is the best Japanese film of the 21st century?

Joshua Rothkopf (@joshrothkopf), Time Out New York

The life-long, nourishing adventure of making one’s way through Ozu, Mizoguchi, Imamura and...

Every week, IndieWire asks a select handful of film and TV critics two questions and publishes the results on Monday. (The answer to the second, “What is the best film in theaters right now?”, can be found at the end of this post.)

This week’s question: In honor of David Lowery’s “A Ghost Story,” what is the best movie about the afterlife?

Kate Erbland (@katerbland), IndieWire

It will come as no surprise to anyone that, as a child, I watched a lot of television. A lot. I was mostly obsessed with HBO — our single movie channel, number 2 on the dial; yes, my childhood TV had a dial, don’t ask — with intermittent deviations into mostly inappropriate mini-series (thus explaining my rarely disclosed expertise on “The Thornbirds”), and was pretty much given free range to watch whatever the hell I wanted, whenever I wanted. This is why my favorite...

Can our children pick and choose the personality traits they inherit, or are they doomed to obtain our lesser qualities? These are the hard questions being meditated on in After the Storm, a sobering, transcendent tale of a divorced man’s efforts to nudge back into his son’s life. Beautifully shot by regular cinematographer Yutaka Yamasaki, it marks a welcome and quite brilliant return to serious fare for writer-editor-director Hirokazu Kore-eda following last year’s Our Little Sister, widely regarded as one of the slightest works of his career thus far.

Recent Kore-eda regular Abe Hiroshi plays Ryota, a prize-winning author struggling to live up to the success of his first novel. He’s a father of one, a gambling addict, and probably a bit of an asshole. We learn the man’s been researching for his follow-up book by moonlighting as a private eye. The job adds an...

★★★★☆ From Still Walking to his latest offering After the Storm, premièring in Un Certain Regard at Cannes, Hirokazu Kore-eda has proven himself a master at delineating the changing dynamics of Japanese family life. Ryota (Hiroshi Abe) is something of a failure. But it hasn't always been so. He had high hopes, a young family and even wrote a prize-winning novel called - somewhat prophetically - The Empty Table. But he's frittered away his good luck on a gambling addiction and now works part-time as a detective, snooping on adulterous couples in order to make his child support. His ex-wife Kyoko (Yoko Maki) is losing patience and believes their 11-year-old son Shingo (Toyota Yoshizawa) might be better off without him in their life.

The Asian Film Awards Academy will present the Lifetime Achievement Award to the venerable Japanese actress Kiki Kirin and to the veteran Hong Kong action choreographer-director Yuen Wo-ping at the Afa Ceremony on March 17th. This award recognizes film professionals who inspire excellence in others, and in their lifetime have made fundamental achievements and lasting impact of outstanding artistic, cultural and commercial significance in Asian Cinema.

Dr. Wilfred Wong, Chairman of the Afa Academy, said: “Master Yuen has brought Chinese martial arts to new heights through his constant innovation and creativity in action films that he has made over a decades-long career in Hong Kong, China and internationally. Ms. Kiki is an actress who is adored by many. Her mesmerizing and charismatic persona has inspired some of the most respected Japanese master filmmakers of our time. The works they have made that are loved by Japanese and international audiences would...

While no one is making video essays about his work, and he doesn't grab the immediate attention of folks like Martin Scorsese, Paul Thomas Anderson, or the Coens, Hirokazu Kore-eda is one of our favorite filmmakers around these parts. The man behind lovely and affecting dramas like "Like Father, Like Son," "Still Walking," "Nobody Knows," and "After Life," his pictures are distinctly Hirokazu Kore-eda-esque, and that continues with his latest, "Our Little Sister." Read More: Review: Hirokazu Kore-Eda's 'Our Little Sister' Starring Sachi Koda, Yoshino Koda, Chika Koda, and Suzu Asano, and based on the graphic novel "Umimachi Diary" by Akimi Yoshida, the story follows three sisters who meet their teenage half-sister for the first time at their father's funeral. Here's the synopsis:  Three sisters - Sachi, Yoshino and Chika - live together in a large house in the city of Kamakura. When their father -.

Hirokazu Kore-eda, a filmmaker perhaps best known for efforts like "After Life," "Still Walking" and "Nobody Knows," has been a steady tear lately. In 2013, he went to Cannes and walked away with the Jury Prize and the Ecumenical Jury Prize for the lovely and moving "Like Father Like Son." While his return this year to the Croisette with "Our Little Sister" was less well received, he's pressing on and is poised for another trip to the festival in the spring. Read More: Cannes Review: 'Like Father, Like Son' A Tender, Loving Portrait Of Parenthood Production has wrapped on Kore-eda's next film "After The Storm." Hiroshi Abe and Kirin Kiki star in the movie about an award-winning author in the shadow of former glory who tries to reconnect with this family. Here's the official synopsis:  Dwelling on his past glory as a prize-winning author, Ryota (Hiroshi Abe) wastes the money he makes as a private.

One of Japan's great filmmakers has a brand new movie on the way and we couldn't be more excited. Two years after his excellent "Like Father, Like Son," and from the man who gave us movies like "Still Walking," "Nobody Knows," and "After Life," Hirokazu Koreeda returns with "Umimachi Diary." And the first, full-length international trailer is here. Based on the manga by Akimi Yoshida, and starring Haruka Ayase, Masami Nagasawa, Kaho, and Suzu Hirose, the story follows three sisters who attend the funeral of their father who they haven't seen in 15 years. There they meet their 14-year-old step-sister for the first time and decide to care for her when no one else can. While we can't understand a single word in the trailer, we expect another lovely melodrama with complex characters and heart-punching emotions. "Umimachi Diary" opens in Japan on June 13th, and given he's a regular on the Croisette,...

To mark the release of Like Father, Like Son on 5th May, we’ve been given copies to give away on DVD.

Would you choose your natural son, or the son you believed was yours after spending 6 years together? Kore-eda Hirokazu, the globally acclaimed director of “Nobody Knows”, “Still Walking” and “I Wish”, returns to the big screen with another family – a family thrown into torment after a phone call from the hospital where the son was born…

Ryota has earned everything he has by his hard work, and believes nothing can stop him from pursuing his perfect life as a winner. Then one day, he and his wife, Midori, get an unexpected phone call from the hospital. Their 6-year-old son, Keita, is not ‘their’ son – the hospital gave them the wrong baby.

Ryota is forced to make a life-changing decision, to choose between ‘nature’ and ‘nurture.’ Seeing Midori’s...

Despite the obvious mafia connections, The Capones is at its heart a show about a family restaurant. Of course, food and family have always gone together, so in honor of its premiere we decided to count down the seven best movies about family and food ever made.

Family, Food, and Lots of Fighting

Returning with new episodes in March

Next Showing:

Link | Posted 2/4/2014 by Sean

The Capones | Eat Drink Man Woman | Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory | Waitress | GoodFellas | Babette's Feast | Big Night | Still Walking...

Hirokazu Kore-eda is a wanderer. The Japanese director, 51, has been known to disappear on set, leaving his cast and crew wondering where their maestro’s ventured off to. For instance, while making his 2008 masterpiece, Still Walking, Kore-eda vanished for a spell, only to discover the flowering trees that became an invaluable motif in the film. The director’s exploratory nature, which one might partly attribute to his background as a documentarian, has proven crucial in the poetic meticulousness of his exteriors. However, his visual instincts are hardly outdoor-exclusive, and his keenness for selecting ideal settings and compositions is just as […]...

Hirokazu Kore-eda is a wanderer. The Japanese director, 51, has been known to disappear on set, leaving his cast and crew wondering where their maestro’s ventured off to. For instance, while making his 2008 masterpiece, Still Walking, Kore-eda vanished for a spell, only to discover the flowering trees that became an invaluable motif in the film. The director’s exploratory nature, which one might partly attribute to his background as a documentarian, has proven crucial in the poetic meticulousness of his exteriors. However, his visual instincts are hardly outdoor-exclusive, and his keenness for selecting ideal settings and compositions is just as […]...

In person, Japanese director Kore-eda Hirokazu is gentle and thoughtful, with a frequent warm, shy smile—of the directors we've met, he perhaps comes closest to being the true embodiment of his films. But his humility is all the more remarkable for the body of work it covers: since establishing himself instantly as a filmmaker of rare sensitivity with 1995's "Maborosi" and breaking through internationally with his vision of a bureaucratic yet sympathetic Purgatory in "After Life," he has brought films to Cannes four times, and earlier this year won the Jury Prize and the Ecumenical Jury Prize for the extraordinarily affecting "Like Father Like Son." (Read our A grade review from Cannes here.) Kore-eda has in fact worked across many genres, from fantasy ("After Life," "Air Doll"), through dramas inspired by true events both public ("Distance") and personal ("Still Walking," "Nobody Knows"), and even a Samurai comedy in "Hana,...

Like Father, Like Son

Since the film’s premiere at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Jury Award, Like Father, Like Son (Soshite chichi ni naru) has been featured in the 2013 New York, Toronto and Chicago Film Festivals and won Audience Awards at the 2013 San Sebastian and Vancouver Film Festivals. The film has also shown at the 2013 AFI Fest. On seeing it you will surely know why. Its universal appeal to families, sons, fathers, wives touches the hearts of everyone who sees it. Its sensitivity in treating human emotions those of parents to each other and to their own children and those of the children to their parents and other siblings is so tender and delicately handled by director Hirokazu Kore-eda, that the film stays within the viewer and grows stronger if seen again.

Written and directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda (After Life, Nobody Knows, Still Walking), Like Father, Like Son has been picked up by Sundance Selects for U.S. distribution. International Sales Agent Wild Bunch has sold the film worldwide. It was produced and distributed by Fuji Television Network, Inc., Amuse Inc. and Gaga Corporation in Japan.

Like Father, Like Son centers on Ryota (Japanese star Masaharu Fukuyama), a successful Tokyo architect who willingly and consciously works long hours to provide for his wife, Midori (Machiko Ono), and six-year-old son, Keita. When a blood test reveals Keita and another baby were switched at birth, two very different families are thrown together and forced to make a difficult decision while Ryota confronts his own issues of responsibility and what it means to be a father.

After seeing the film a second time at the Crescent Screening Room in Beverly Hills (I had already seen it in Cannes) and being feted at a special dinner at Spago among the Hollywood Foreign Press, I felt very privileged to interview Kore-Eda the next day.

Sl: Having been a fan of Nobody Knows about two siblings whose mother has left them with no sign of returning (there is no father), can you tell me what is your common thread between the two films?

Kore-eda: Until recently becoming a father, I had not been very conscious of fatherhood. The children in Nobody Knows had a resonance with me. The children are projections of myself.

I grew up without a father. Hana yori mo naho was also about a Samurai without a father and Still Walking also had a troubled father. Like Father, Like Son gave me the opportunity to show when it is not good with a father.

I have a 5 year old child, just like the protagonist in the story, and through making this film I wanted to think about what blood connections really mean, an idea very close to me. In order to make the film interesting and compelling to the audience, I placed the protagonist in the situation of being a victim of switched babies.

Your films often touch on paternity. What do being a father – and fatherhood itself – mean to you?

Kore-eda: I really don’t have an answer right now. As my position in the family tree has changed, I believe my idea of fatherhood has changed as well. I will probably continue to look at fatherhood in my coming films until I figure it out.

Sl: How was it working with the children?

Kore-eda: I wanted there to be a contrast of character between the two children. The goal was to bring out their individual personalities in the film. Because the children are six, I wanted them to express confusion rather than sadness, towards their situation.

It’s difficult to elicit puzzlement from children. Most often I just let them act and did not have to explain to them. But when the boy runs away to go home to his family and when Keita thinks that his father is coming for him and he runs away, I had to explain.

On the other hand, when the boy is in the architect’s house and he keeps asking “why”, I didn’t explain anything. The actor told the story and the boy’s acting was totally natural.

Sl: How about working with Fukuyama Masuharu. How was it with him? I know he was a famous pop singer. Here he played such a cold man.

Kore-Eda: He was a pop singer and songwriter for 20 years but he is also known as an actor too. In person he is down-to-earth, straightforward, friendly and is always entertaining everyone, but his public image is cool. I was surprised on meeting him to see how friendly he was.

He has not played many roles as an ordinary, everyday type of guy, like a father.

I took advantage of his coolness and broke it down. He seemed to enjoy badmouthing people, talking about money. Together we pushed his unlikeablity, but just enough so that the audience stayed on his side. I coached him to raise his head and look down, to curl his lips in disdain, to turn his back on someone.

His fans might not like seeing him act this way, but they are only part of the audience for this film. His fans range from 20 to 40 years and are predominately female. The audience was a broad range including people in their 60s and 70s in groups, seeing it multiple times. 2.5 million have seen the film in Japan making it the most successful of all my films.

Sl: What about the idea of bloodlines (nature vs. nurture)?

Kore-eda: The actor is very conservative, a trait he got from his own father and he has to grapple with it. The man on the street today would probably choose the child they raised. On the other hand, adoption has not caught on in Japan and the importance of bloodlines is not an anomaly. Many still hold to the emphasis on bloodline and heritage. Interestingly, the Koreans who see the film would choose bloodlines even more than the Japanese.

Sl: Tell me about the music. The piano which the little boy plays and the piano music which played during the transitions?

Kore-eda: When I am working on a script I usually choose one instrument with a particular emphasis. The image I had while wring this was when the children were in the car switching families. I wanted music which was not melodic but rather percussive. I had been listening to the CDs of Glenn Gould and his music seemed to fit the image. I was afraid it would not be easily obtainable, but with Amuse and Gaga on the case, they were were able to obtain the rights.

Sl: At the end, the family became inclusive and the necessity to choose one over the other was less important. I liked that very much. Can you talk about that?

Kore-eda: The script’s last scene description was explicit. It said that the two families merged as they all entered the house so that you could not tell who was the child and who were the parents.

N.B. The publicist joined in our conversation to say how “blended” families are so prevalent today in the United States, with divorce, children from two families merging…Kore-eda liked that and said that perhaps one of his next films will deal with such a concept of blended families.

An enormous favorite on the festival circuit, Japanese director Kore-Eda Hirokazu debuted his latest drama Like Father, Like Son in Canneswhere audiences hoping for another multi-layered, character driven drama were not disappointed by his handling of the emotionally complex premise.Would you choose your natural son, or the son you believed was yours after spending 6 years together? Kore-eda Hirokazu, the globally acclaimed director of "Nobody Knows" (2004), "Still Walking" (2008) and "I Wish" (2011), returns to the big screen with another family - a family thrown into torment after a phone call from the hospital where the son was born... Ryota has earned everything he has by his hard work, and believes nothing can stop him from pursuing his perfect life as a winner. Then...

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...

Chicago – After heating up juror monocles with the steamiest three hours at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, the lesbian romance “Blue is the Warmest Color” won the coveted Palme d’Or at the 2013 awards ceremony held Sunday, May 26th. The top prize was shared by French-Tunisian director Abdellatif Kechiche (“The Secret of the Grain”) and his two leading ladies, Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos.

Settling for the Grand Prix was Joel and Ethan Coen’s “Inside Llewyn Davis,” a music-filled portrait of a fictionalized ’60s-era folk singer played by Oscar Isaac (in a performance guaranteed to generate Oscar buzz). Amat Escalante won Best Director for his brutal Mexican crime drama, “Heli,” while the Best Screenplay award was presented to Zhangke Jia (“Still Life”) for his uncharacteristically blood-spattered Chinese thriller, “A Touch of Sin.” Hirokazu Koreeda (“Still Walking”) won the Jury Prize for his Japanese family drama, “Like Father, Like Son.

Sundance Selects is acquiring U.S. rights to Japanese writer-director Kore-eda Hirokazu’s "Like Father, Like Son," which took a jury prize at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival. "Like Father, Like Son" a dramedy that examines two families who discover that their six-year-old sons were switched at birth. It's the fourth festival title that Sundance Selects purchased at the festival. The film stars Fukuyama Masaharu, Ono Machiko, Maki Yoko, and Lily Franky, and was produced by Kameyama Chihiro, Hatanaka Tatsuro, and Tom Yoda. The film made its world premiere this week in Competition at the festival. Sundance Selects’ sister label, IFC Films, previously released Hirokazu’s "Still Walking" and "Nobody Knows." The deal for the film was negotiated by Arianna Bocco, senior VP acquisitions and productions for Sundance Selects/IFC Films with Carole Baraton at Wild Bunch on behalf of the filmmakers. Sundance Selects made deals at the festival already for several festival award winners.