Kaibutsu

A building is set ablaze in the opening minutes of Koreeda Hirokazu’s KAIBUTSU, a mighty, multi-layered drama that begins at the crime scene before carefully developing into a deeply empathetic story about the nature of guilt and responsibility in contemporary Japan. Saori (Ando Sakura) is a single mother who grows increasingly concerned when her son Minato (Kurokawa Soya) begins exhibiting disturbing behaviour after the fire. When Mr. Hoti (Nagayama Eita), Minato’s schoolteacher, is revealed to be the cause of her son’s fragile state, Saori raises hell with the school administrators, unleashing a devastating chain of events born of fear and miscommunication. Featuring a beautifully plaintive score by the late composer Sakamoto Ryuichi, KAIBUTSU takes cues from RASHOMON and shows the same events from multiple perspectives, each revealing evidence of the ways social atomisation and retrograde standards of propriety affect the innocent. Koreeda once again distinguishes himself as a master chronicler of dysfunctional families and societal taboos, but KAIBUTSU elevates these signature concerns into one of his darkest and most ambitious films in years. (Beatrice Loayza)

On Sunday, 31 of October our main sponsor, Erste Bank, invites you to a matinee with free admission.
ISSUANCE OF THE TICKETS FOR THE VERMEHRT SCHÖNES! FILMMATINEE
The free tickets (max. 2 per person) are available at the Viennale advance booking offices, in the festival cinemas and via the Erste Bank Vermehrt Schönes! lottery: sponsoring.erstebank.at