“This sublimely poignant character study will likely rank alongside Ozu's classics… one of the best Japanese family dramas ever put on film.” - Time Out

The Yokoyama family reunites to honour their eldest son, who died saving a boy from drowning 15 years earlier. The annual ritual teases out buried resentments and disappointments - particularly for Ryota, who has spent the last decade and a half living in his dead brother's shadow.

One of the great humanists of Japanese cinema, Hirokazu Koreeda (the subject of a MIFF retrospective in 2007) here continues his dissection of the themes of memory, death and loss.

“So completely absorbing, so sure of its own scale and scope that while you're watching it the rest of the world fades into irrelevance.” - New York Times