Look Back
Look Back charts the unlikely friendship of two middle-school girls. Fujino (Natsuki Deguchi) is popular and outgoing, from a happy family, while Kyomoto (Aju Makita) is agoraphobic and nearly mute. They bond over a shared love for drawing manga. Kyomoto idolizes Fujino but is the purer artist, and they must gradually face the challenges of maturity and the vicissitudes of the marketplace. Look Back started as an award-winning manga by Tatsuko Fujimoto and then became a hugely admired 60-minute anime drama by writer-director Kiyotoka Oshimaya. Writer-director Hirokazu Kore-eda (After Life, Shoplifters MVFF41), a Japanese cinema master for more than 30 years, shapes Look Back into a live-action drama, a nostalgic celebration of the transparent pleasures of being young, and a poignant meditation on the insoluble tension between friendship and creative self-expression. The luminous presence of Deguchi and Makita, and Senzo Ueono’s subtly muted color cinematography assist in making this one of Kore-eda’s most memorable films. — Larry Gross
Director/s
Hirokazu Koreeda
Tokyo native Hirokazu Kore-eda’s films include Maborosi (1995); After Life (1998); Nobody Knows (2004); Still Walking (2008); I Wish (2011); Like Father, Like Son (2013), winner of the Jury Prize and Prize of the Ecumenical Jury – Special Mention at Cannes; Our Little Sister (2015); The Third Murder (2017); Shoplifters (2018), recipient of Cannes’ Palme d’Or and the Best Foreign Film César Award; The Truth (2019); Broker (2022), winner of Cannes’ Prize of the Ecumenical Jury; and Cannes’ Queer Palm winner Monster (2023).