A Hundred Flowers

Genki Kawamura, a best-selling author (If Cats Disappeared From the World) and star producer (on anime mega-hits like Belle, Weathering With You, and Your Name) makes a poetic and visually stunning feature debut, adapted from his own novel, with A Hundred Flowers. Yuriko (veteran Mieko Harada, who made movie history in Akira Kurosawa’s Ran) is an aging piano teacher whose mind is fast fading as dementia fractures and undoes her grip on reality. Her son, Izumi (Masaki Suda) discovers her diary and finds himself transported back into the uncertain world of his own memories and the tangle of their common past, at the center of which lies a haunting experience of his mother’s disappearance/ This intimate meditation on memory and identity, forgetting and forgiveness, both devastating and beautiful, won the Silver Shell for Best Director at the 70th San Sebastian International Film Festival, and is a must-watch cinematic experience.