Japanese arthouse favorite Hirokazu Koreeda returns to his wheelhouse to marvelous effect with Look Back, an aching drama about growing up and making art, featuring a pair of stunning performances from child actors.

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The film is the Palme d’Or winner’s 18th feature and second this year, following Sheep in the Box, a speculative drama about a grieving couple who take in an AI-powered android replica of their deceased son. That film was unusual for Koreeda both in its sci-fi subject matter and in the frosty reception it received from many Cannes critics. Look Back, which premiered in competition at the Venice Film Festival on Monday, appears a far surer bet for admirers of the director’s signature gentle humanism.

The film adapts an acclaimed manga of the same name by artist Tatsuki Fujimoto, best known globally as the creator of Chainsaw Man. The story follows Fujino (played by 12-year-old first-time actress Furi Nanase), a vivacious grade-schooler whose gift at drawing comic strips has made her a minor celebrity at her small-town elementary school. Fujino’s artistic ambition is further inflamed when she sees the drawings of Kyomoto (Rokka Okada), a reclusive classmate who rarely leaves home but whose work has an almost adult-like sophistication. What begins as a fierce rivalry eventually blossoms into a devoted friendship and manga-making partnership — Fujino draws the characters, Kyomoto does backgrounds — as the story follows the two girls over 13 years as they come of age, get a first taste of professional publishing success, and experience a falling out that sends them down separate paths (midway through the film, actresses Natsuki Deguchi and Aju Makita step in to play the adult Fujino and Kyomoto, respectively).

Shot on location in Japan’s northern Tohoku region over the course of a full year, the film is positively Studio Ghibli-esque in its reverent portrayal of childhood innocence in the Japanese countryside — amid the shifting beauty of the seasons and the halting wonders and dramas of growing up.

The Hollywood Reporter recently connected with Koreeda in Tokyo to discuss the nuances of adapting manga into cinema, the emotional core of Look Back‘s story, and the surprise encounter with Takeshi Kitano that defines his memories of Venice.

How did you discover Tatsuki Fujimoto’s original manga, and how did it hit you upon first reading?

I was on my way back to Tokyo from a trip to Kyoto, and after I stepped off the bullet train in Shinagawa Station (a major junction on the southeast side of Tokyo), I decided to pop into a bookstore. There were a bunch of books displayed with a cover featuring the back of a girl seated at a desk. It kind of caught my eye, and I bought it on a whim. When I got back to my office, I cracked it open just to take a look, and I ended up reading the whole thing in a single sitting. I was very moved by it. It’s very rare for me to encounter a work where I immediately think I might want to adapt it. It was around the time of the pandemic, a period when I hadn’t been working very much. The story really moved me. It even encouraged me to start thinking about my own work again. It was that kind of experience. This idea of watching a young person discover a great passion and really pursue it with everything they’ve got — there’s something very touching about that. A young girl’s back as she huddles over her desk through the passage of the seasons, the sound of pen hitting paper as she works and works to draw better manga — these were things I knew I wanted to adapt very faithfully in a film.

Later on, as you began to think more deeply about the adaptation process, what was important for you to retain and what did you feel you would need to change for a film version?

Well, the manga is written by an artist named Tatsuki Fujimoto, and the story’s two lead characters are called Fujino and Kyomoto — names that are basically versions of parts of his family name. My understanding is that these two characters are people who exist within the author, or that they represent different aspects of him. In the manga, Kyomoto, especially, is quite an abstract presence, in that not much of her background or the details of her life are depicted. But for a live-action film, you can’t really portray a lead character as an abstract presence, right? It just wouldn’t have really worked on screen. So, I had to rely on my own instincts and interpretations as I went about depicting her as a more fleshed-out, fully three-dimensional character who lives in Fujino’s town.

The film is beautifully shot and such a moving depiction of a childhood in the Japanese countryside. To what extent did you try to emulate the actual drawings of the manga in the way you storyboarded and framed your shots? Are some shots direct attempts at live-action recreations of Fujimoto’s drawings?

Well, doing that is a little more difficult than it initially might seem. When you read a manga, one of the things that’s very important is the frame around each drawing, right? And that changes whether it’s a square, a horizontal rectangle, or a drawing that’s vertically oriented. By changing the shapes and sizes of those frames, the manga artist creates a unique kind of rhythm as you’re reading it — and that’s something we can’t fully recreate with a moving image. Cinema simply has a different kind of grammar. Once you have a feel for this, it makes adapting manga into live-action film actually quite difficult to do. But there were images in Look Back that were nonetheless very important to carry over into the film. Something that is very consistent and central to the manga is the image of looking at the character’s back as she’s seated at her desk — this notion that we are observing someone doing creative work very devotedly, and very passionately. We see her back repeatedly, as she sits at her desk, hunched over a drawing facing the window. The environment outside her window keeps changing, and the drawings that she’s making evolve, but the back stays the same. There is also the notion of one character becoming two, and then becoming one again. These motifs are very clear in the manga, so I felt they were essential to recreate in the film.

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I found myself interpreting the film as depicting two forms of overlapping loss: the fall from childhood innocence that we all must experience, and the evolution of a dream-filled young artist into a working professional.

I can see that, and I do think that is one facet of the story. But consider all of the changes that they go through. They experience a turning point that leads to them splitting up, right? Fujino is left behind and she goes on to create commercial manga. Her relationship to her work necessarily changes. She’s working with a team of people now. Her previously analog drawing process becomes digital. Even the sounds that surround her process begin to change. I knew it was very important not to depict these changes in a purely negative light. Because sure, as you said, there’s indeed a kind of loss involved when the intention behind your artistic pursuit loses some of its purity. But when Fujino reunites with Kyomoto — albeit in the strangest and saddest way — we see in that last scene that she’s decided to carry within herself that thing that Kyomoto had, and by doing so, she’s able to recognize and be reunited with the passion she once had. So it’s also a story of regaining something as much as a story of loss.

I have a young daughter, and watching this film as a dad of a little girl, I found myself getting very emotional in a lot of unexpected moments and not even knowing why. I’ve read that you also have a daughter. Did being a dad shaped how you told this story about childhood innocence and two girls growing up together?

Oh yes, I do think that had some kind of influence — because I was tearful the entire time I made this film. I was tearful when I wrote the script. I was tearful on set. I was tearful as I was editing it — and even after I finished it. I think there’s just something about watching children trying to do their best. Say it’s something that they’re really passionate about, and then watching them really go for it — it’s just so moving. Even when it’s in a work of fiction, I just find it so beautiful, and that beauty isn’t something that’s visual. It’s just this idea of human beings really trying their best at something that they love. I’ll stop there, or I might get teary-eyed now. Sorry if this isn’t befitting of a director (Laughs).

Furi Nanase plays the young Fujino. I understand she is a total newcomer? How did you find her and what was it like working with her?

The moment she stepped into the audition room, the girl you see in the film is the girl who was already there. All of the staff surrounding me during the audition were like, “Oh wow, Fujino is here.“ I’ve worked with a lot of child actors in Japan, but this was the first time I’ve encountered a person who was so fully realized. Just like Fujino, she has an incredible confidence and sense of self-worth. And a very fun energy too. When she showed up on set, she insisted that everyone call her by her character’s name at all times, and she immediately started hanging up these official-looking flyers saying that if you call Furi by her real name instead of Fujino, you will have to pay her a fine. Her personality really matched the character. It was a very easy casting decision.

You’ve been quite prolific lately. You directed a full series for Netflix last year, the critically acclaimed drama Asura; and you’re releasing two features this year: Sheep in the Box, which bowed in Cannes in May, and now Look Back, competing in Venice. Are you enjoying working this much, or do you plan to slow down?

Nope, I have no plans to take a break. I’m already writing the script for my next film. I’m going to continue keeping busy.

I believe Look Back will be your fourth film to premiere in Venice. Do you have any special memories or rituals on the Lido?

Venice is a very important place to me, because it’s where I screened my debut film. I have a vivid memory of arriving late at night and waking up the first morning at the Excelsior Hotel and seeing that the sea was right outside the front door, and thinking, “Oh my god, is this what international film festivals are like?” It was all just so glamorous and out of the ordinary. And then on my first walk down to the lobby, I encountered Takeshi Kitano. He was walking in from a swim in the ocean, and there was light streaming into the lobby, and it was like making him into a dramatic silhouette — one of our biggest stars in Japan, and he was like literally glowing. And I thought, “So this is the Venice Film Festival!” I still kind of associate Venice with Kitano (Laughs). In any case, I’m very excited to be going back to screen my latest film there.

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