Japanese auteur Kore-eda Hirokazu has revealed the one thing he will never put on screen: a child crying, explaining at the Singapore International Film Festival that his ideal is for viewers to remember a child’s smile, and cry themselves.
Kore-eda Hirokazu (Credits: Variety)
Known for the natural performances he draws from child actors, Kore-eda said the rule is a deliberate choice, not a limitation. “It’s not that I can’t, or that it’s difficult. I don’t shoot it,” he told an In Conversation event at the festival on Saturday. “The ideal is that after viewers finish watching, they remember that child’s smile and cry.”
It is a philosophy that runs through his most celebrated work. From Nobody Knows and Like Father, Like Son to Monster, and his 2018 Palme d’Or winner Shoplifters, the first Japanese film to win Cannes’ top prize in more than two decades, Kore-eda has built his reputation on deeply human family dramas where emotion arrives quietly rather than being forced.
What Ken Loach and Hou Hsiao-hsien Taught Kore-eda Hirokazu
At the Singapore event, Kore-eda also reflected on what filmmakers Ken Loach and Hou Hsiao-hsien taught him, placing his own approach within a lineage of directors who trust observation over manipulation. Rather than wringing tears from a young performer, his method asks the audience to do the emotional work, to sit with a child’s world and feel its weight for themselves.
That restraint is part of why his child performances feel so natural. Instead of directing a child toward a big, tearful moment, he creates space for small, honest behaviour: a smile, a glance, a silence. The emotion that follows belongs to the viewer, not to a camera trick, and it tends to linger longer because of it.
The festival appearance itself underlined his standing in Asian cinema. The 37th Singapore International Film Festival, running from October 21 to November 1, 2026, is honouring Kore-eda with its Cinema Honorary Award, the festival’s highest accolade for filmmakers who have made exceptional and enduring contributions to Asian cinema.
Kore-eda Hirokazu’s Look Back at the Singapore Film Festival
He was also in Singapore for a Special Presentation of his latest film, Look Back, on October 24, marking the film’s Southeast Asia premiere ahead of its theatrical release on October 29. Look Back is the first live-action feature adaptation of any manga by acclaimed creator Tatsuki Fujimoto, and the In Conversation session on the same day doubled as the occasion for his honorary award.
Seen together, the award, the new film and the candid rule about children on screen tell a single story about Kore-eda’s cinema. He does not chase the easiest emotional payoff. He protects his young actors from it, trusts his audience to feel what is left unsaid, and lets a remembered smile do what a filmed tear never could.
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Source: Variety — read the full story there.
