Special Screening of Hirokazu Kore-eda’s THE TRUTH

Due to increasing travel uncertainties, director Hirokazu Kore-eda will no longer be able to come to Chicago. We look forward to welcoming director Kore-eda to Chicago at some point in the future to pay tribute to his career and present a retrospective of his work at that time.

We will still present our special preview screening of THE TRUTH on Sunday March 15. We are working on coordinating a recorded on-screen conversation with the director after the screening of the film. 

The Chicago International Film Festival is honored to bring illustrious director Hirokazu Kore-eda to Chicago for a special tribute and retrospective of key films from his career.

On March 14 and 15, we will present new 2k digital restorations of Kore-eda’s beloved masterworks Nobody Knows, Still Walking, and Like Father, Like Son.

The weekend will culminate with an in-person tribute and presentation of the Festival’s Artistic Achievement Award to director Kore-eda on March 15. The tribute will be followed by a special presentation of his most recent film The Truth featuring a post-screening Q&A.

Acclaimed director Hirokazu Kore-eda’s more than 25 year career has garnered numerous prestigious awards including the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival for 2018’s Shoplifters and the Chicago International Film Festival’s Gold Hugo for Best Film for his 1995 feature debut Maborosi. His first feature shot outside Japan, The Truth, starring French film legends Catherine Deneuve and Juliette Binoche, made its U.S. premiere at the 55th Chicago International Film Festival last October.

Tickets for all screenings are available now! All events take place at the Landmark Century Centre Cinema. Find full details here.

Sunday, March 15 at 6:00pm:
The Truth
2019, France/Japan, 106 min.

Catherine Deneuve and Juliette Binoche play a mother and daughter at odds in master director Kore-eda’s first foray outside of his native Japan. After her movie star mother Fabienne (Deneuve) publishes a controversial memoir, screenwriter Lumir (Binoche) returns to France with husband Hank (Ethan Hawke) and child in tow. Fabienne is shooting her newest film, Memories of My Mother, and the on-screen and on-set worlds become increasingly and amusingly intertwined in this shrewd exploration of reality and fiction, family and forgiveness. Pre-recorded conversation with director Hirokazu Kore-eda to follow the film.

Previously Scheduled Events

Saturday, March 14
1:00pm:
Nobody Knows Cancelled
2004, Japan, 141 min.

The image of three young children emerging from the suitcases of mother Keiko and dutiful 12-year-old son Akira as they move into a cramped Tokyo flat presents the first of several unnerving signs in this ripped-from-the-headlines story. Single mother Keiko comes and goes from their lives, but when she disappears for good, the children, led by Akira, must figure out how to survive on their own without being discovered. Unease gives way to unyielding tension, captured by the largely handheld cinematography in which tightly framed detail inserts—clenched fists, tapping feet, small objects—convey the darkening mood as we enter the rich inner lives of the children.

4:00pm:
Still Walking Cancelled
2008, Japan, 114 min.

Ryota (Hiroshi Abe) is the 40-year-old “second son” of the Yokoyamas, a family bound equally by love, deeply held resentments, and unspeakable sorrows. On a rare visit home, Ryota brings his new wife, a widow, and her ten-year-old child, as his parents and sister’s family gather to remember Junpei, the eldest son, who died in an accident 15 years earlier. The family and the home, once a flourishing medical clinic, are weighed down by former glory and unfulfilled promise. Marked by low interior shots and a strong sense of intimacy in a style reminiscent of Ozu Yasujiro, director Kore-eda captures the small joys of familial life and the near impossibility of forgiveness with poignancy and compassion.

Sunday, March 15
3:00pm:
Like Father, Like Son Cancelled
2013, Japan, 120 min.

In this winner of the 2013 Cannes Film Festival Jury Prize, hard-working architect Ryota spends his days meticulously planning his family’s future. His plans are turned upside down when he and his wife discover that, due to a hospital mix-up six years earlier, their young son Keita is not their own. The foundations of their identities as loving parents begin to crumble as they must negotiate their newly complicated circumstances, meeting their biological child and sending Keita to live with this new family.