Film Screening: "Monster" (Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2023)
Introduced by Daryl Maude (Asian & Middle Eastern Studies)
After a mother (Ando Sakura) discovers that a teacher's bullying is behind her young son's sudden strange behavior, she storms into his school demanding an explanation.
Continually left without satisfactory answers-and with an increasingly distressed child-she furiously escalates her concerns to the school board and the media.
But as the story unfolds through the multilayered perspectives of mother, teacher, and child, the real truth gradually emerges-and proves much more complex than anyone could have expected.
--Winner of the Queer Palm and Best Screenplay at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival
"MONSTER is one of the finest films of the year, and its structure - like its circle of characters - carries secrets that can only be unraveled through patience and empathy." - Natalia Winkelman, New York Times
"As the perspectives converge, a tale of queasy tenderness begins to emerge, about the way friendship, love, shame, and rejection so often live on the same continuum." - Bilge Ebiri, Vulture
"A minutely observed, profoundly compassionate chronicle of untidy contemporary lives." - BBC