Friday, May 15, 2026 at 4:00 PM
Los Feliz Theatre, Los Angeles
### **ABOUT THE FILM:** *In Japanese with English subtitles.* Based on a children’s essay adapted by famed Japanese screenwriter Yoko Mizuki in her first work for Naruse, Mother stars the legendary actress-director Kinuyo Tanaka as a beleaguered working class matron, whose self-sacrificing efforts to maintain her family during Tokyo’s postwar reconstruction make her a paragon of maternal virtue in the eyes of her teenage daughter Toshiko (Kyoko Kagawa). Toshiko idealizes her mother and the value system she embodies, a naive perspective that pleasantly lifts what in fact unfurls as a bitterly sad, episodic tale of slow-burn economic emmiseration. Anticipating the films of Hou Hsiao-hsien in its ironically sentimental vision of Confucian dissolution, Naruse’s film is a melodramatic tearjerker for the ages. FORMAT: 35mm DISTRIBUTOR: Janus Films COUNTRY: Japan