Manbiki kazoku

Koreeda Hirokazu has always been interested primarily in families, especially in children. It is his way to talk about modern Japanese society, which is obviously permeated by moral codes and communal traditions, and, less often taken into account, by the structuring of lifes through housing and infrastructure. The family in MANBIKI KAZOKU lives in a small house in a conspicuous location: it almost seems like this is an old building gone into hiding in the midst of a city. And the people sharing this place are also interested in a certain degree of invisibility: they are a family of outcasts, related not by blood but by circumstances of precarity. Head of the family is an old lady who simply did not want to die alone. So she took people in, step by step assembling an ersatz kinfolk. Koreeda starts his story with another addition: Juri, a fugitive child, finds shelter with Granny Shibata and her tender bunch. Would this have to be considered practical solidarity, or a kidnapping? Koreeda dedicates the final parts of his movie to an ofcial view on something institutions will never fully grasp: MANBIKI KAZOKU is a wonderful testimony to an intuitive humanism. (Bert Rebhandl)