MONSTER

Director: Kore-eda Hirokazu

2023, 126 min., PG-13

Language: Japanese with English subtitles

Screenwriter: Sakamoto Yuji

Cast: Ando Sakura, Nagayama Eita, Kurokawa Soya, Hiliragi Hinata

 

A Queer Thursday presentation of the Japanese film directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda (Shoplifters) that won the Best Screenplay and Queer Palm Awards at the Cannes Film Festival. After a mother (Ando Sakura) discovers that her son’s teacher Mr. Hori’s bullying – or worse – may be behind her 9-year-old son Minato’s sudden strange behavior, she storms into his school demanding an explanation. Continually left without satisfactory answers by the rigid school administration—and with an increasingly distressed child—she escalates her concerns to the school board and the parents of her son’s best friend, Yuri. However, as the story leading up to Minato’s mysterious disappearance is shown first through the perspective of the mother, then Mr. Hori, and finally Minato himself, we learn that there is much that the fear-driven adults have missed. Minato and Yuri are exploring a romantic friendship, in a tender, secretive and often confusing journey towards self-acceptance and liberation. “It’s a marvel…a profoundly compassionate chronicle of untidy contemporary lives.” – Nicholas Barber, BBC.com