Maborosi

Koreeda’s first fiction feature is an exquisite meditation on loss, loneliness, uncertainty, and coming to terms with the past.

By 1995 Hirokazu Koreeda was already well established as a documentary director, but it was his fictional debut that brought him international attention; winning prizes at Chicago, Vancouver, and Venice, and securing commercial releases in western countries. An apparently happy marriage is abruptly ended by the husband’s sudden death, but was it accident or suicide? Koreeda’s haunting, meditative film traces a widow’s attempts to cope with and comprehend her bereavement.

With its static camera setups and long takes evoking the work of the great Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu and Taiwanese master Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Maborosi announced a vital new presence in Japanese cinema.