122 minutes, opens exclusively at GV Funan on Oct 9★★★★☆

Japanese writer-director Chie Hayakawa’s debut work, the dystopian fantasy Plan 75 (2022), won a clutch of awards and marked her as a storyteller who could seamlessly blend the social with the psychological. Renoir – in the running for the Palme d’Or at 2025’s Cannes Film Festival in May – is, in contrast, a deeply personal story rooted in Hayakawa’s childhood and the death of her father.

It follows 11-year-old Fuki (Yui Suzuki), whose mother Utako (Hikari Ishida) is struggling with work and caring for a terminally ill husband, Keiji (veteran actor-comedian Lily Franky). The tween is forced to raise herself.

Her child’s mind has to process gender roles – especially the talent husbands have for making their wives miserable – and death. But this is no tearjerker. Fuki is vibrantly alive, watching everything and trying to crack the code of adult behaviour.

Hayakawa’s film is a moving tribute to childhood innocence, buoyed by Suzuki’s magnetic performance as the curious but introspective child reckoning with emotions and people she is not yet equipped to handle.