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Our Little Sister (PG)

Japanese / English subtitles

Japan | 2015 | 128 mins Dir: Hirokazu Koreeda.

From Hirokazu Koreeda (Still Walking; Like Father, Like Son) comes this beautifully graceful, meticulously filmed tale of sisterly love.

Screened in Competition at Cannes 2015, it tells the story of three sisters in their twenties – nurse Sachi, bank worker Yoshino and shop girl Chika – who live together in a rambling ancestral home they jokingly refer to as an ‘adult dorm’. Their existence there is carefully emotionally calibrated, but this changes when their estranged father dies and at his funeral, they meet their smart younger half-sister, Suzu.

Impulsively taking her in, they adjust their set-up and grow to love her, partly as a baby sister, partly as a quasi-daughter. But is their happiness keeping them from leaving their troubled childhoods behind and graduating to adult life?

As ever, the masterful Kore-eda’s brilliance lies in taking a story with seemingly limited dramatic potential and turning it into an heartbreaking family saga of immense emotional power.

Showing Times:

• Wed 18 May: 8pm

Venue: Exeter Phoenix, Studio 74