Renoir

Official Selection, 2025 Cannes Film Festival
Official Selection, 2025 Toronto International Film Festival

Fuki’s terminally ill father has been on the deathbed so long that her mother must return to work, leaving the 11-year-old alone to roam the suburbs of Tokyo with her precocious curiosity feeding a vivid imagination. Fuki (the indelible Yui Suzuki) practices telepathy. Scans gruesome news reports. Interviews disgraced neighbors. Explores a telephone hotline for lonely singles. Meanwhile, her mom (Hikari Ishida) prepares burial outfits and spends time with a handsome behavior coach, while her father (Lily Franky) chases cancer cures and endures his coworkers’ patronizing hospital visits. As each parent seeks relief from their growing solitude, Fuki’s yearning for human experience brings her dangerously close to the worst elements of the adult world while her imagination brings unexplainable companionship.

With RENOIR, filmmaker Chie Hayakawa wanted to revisit her own childhood living for 10 years with a dying father and its mix of emotional distance, guilt, youthful exploration, and awe. Fresh-eyed and gentle, RENOIR depicts this peculiarly suspended time as a series of evanescent episodes, easing us toward grief’s held breath, one girl’s awakening amidst life’s darkness, and her inner life as a mysterious new home.

– Christina Ree