Renoir

IFF Cannes 2025 - Nomination: Participation in the main competition (Chie Hayakawa)

Following the success of the award-winning Plan 75, Chie Hayakawa returns with an extremely personal, poetic portrait of the family seen through the eyes of a young girl. Renoir brings to mind the work of another specialist in family paintings — also the Japanese Hirokazu Koreeda.

Suburbs of Tokyo, 1987. 11-year-old Fuki watches the slow decay of her home world. Her father, Keiji, struggles with an incurable illness, and her mother, Utako, overwhelmed by work and caring for her sick husband, becomes emotionally absent. Left alone with her feelings, Fuki escapes into a world of imagination, where she feels much safer. The girl begins to be fascinated by hypnosis and telepathy, she also has a very rich inner world, which distinguishes her from her peers. All this also allows her to better cope with the difficult reality around her.

Chie Hayakawa's film is a moving reflection on the sensitivity and attempt by the young heroine to understand the adult world. At the same time, the story is based on the personal experience of the director, whose childhood was marked by the cancer disease of her father and his death.