Hirokazu Koreeda | Japan | 2016 | 115’

No director working today observes family life with such delicacy and care, or is so unstintingly generous with what they find. Ryota (Hiroshi Abe) is a once-promising novelist eking out a living at a detective agency in a tatty northern suburb of Tokyo. After the death of his father, he is struggling to find child support money and reconnect with his son and ex-wife. This is superb filmmaking in the compassionate, lyrical tradition of Koreeda’s fellow countryman Yasujiro Ozu. You’ll walk out of the cinema wanting to be a better person.