"Already a master of pace and visual contemplation, Kore-eda moved from documentary to narrative features with the ease and assured style of a master."
Tara Judah, Watershed Cinema Producer

Hirokazu Kore-eda won Best Director 1995 Venice Film Festival for his brilliant debut feature, which follows a widow’s coastal relocation and efforts to rebuild her life after her spouse takes his own life.

Yumiko (played by Japanese fashion model Makiko Esumi) is troubled by the notion that she brings death to people close to her. Following the loss of her grandmother and husband, she remarries and begins to find happiness anew. But on a return to her old home for her brother’s wedding, a flood of troubling memories begins to haunt her.

Replete with lengthy dialogue-free passages and nods to his famous ‘pillow shots’ (short reflective images linking scenes), it’s Kore-eda’s most overt nod to that other Japanese master of cinema Yasujiro Ozu. An exquisitely beautiful film, one of astonishing visual intensity and emotional depth.

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