Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa Producer Yukie Kito, Wouter Barendrecht Executive Producer Yasushi Kotani, Michael J. Werner Writer Max Mannix, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Sachiko Tanaka Cinematographer Akiko Ashizawa; Editor: Koichi Takahashi Music Kazumasa Hashimoto Cast Teruyuki Kagawa, Kyoko Koizumi, Haruka Igawa, Yu Koyanagi, Kai Inowaki, Kanji Tsuda, Koji Yakusho Country Japan, Netherlands, Hong Kong Language Japanese (w/ English subtitles) Film Info 119min Genre Drama

Winner - Un Certain Regard Jury Prize, Cannes Film Festival 2008

Every family has its secrets.

Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s latest tale is an ironic, quietly offbeat take on a family in massive self-denial; a portrait of a seemingly ordinary Japanese family. All is normal and the same…or so it seems.

Bent, but not yet broken, the Sasaki family shows how the pride of men can bring a family to its knees, and how, sometimes, it takes the dreams of children to lift it back up again.

Father Ryuhei is terminated from his job and is left scrambling to leave his pride and shameful secret intact. While his oldest son rarely returns home and wife/mother Megumi struggles underneath the burden of her entire family, Kenji, the youngest child, secretly takes up the piano against patriarchal wishes, deaf to all remonstrance. These forbidden notes may, in the end, be the only thing that keeps their family from its undoing.

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