Hirokazu Koreeda's Look Back opens in select North American theaters on December 30, then goes nationwide on January 15, and today GKIDS released the official trailer. It is the first live-action version of Tatsuki Fujimoto's manga (Japanese comic) one-shot, the story that became a hit animated feature in 2024, now retold by the Palme d'Or winning director of Shoplifters and Nobody Knows.
GKIDS, the Oscar-winning animation specialist, released the 2024 anime in North American theaters too. With this film it keeps pushing into live action, after Kokuho and ahead of Takashi Yamazaki's Godzilla Minus Zero.
The story
Fujino is a confident grade-schooler who draws comics for her school newspaper and soaks up her classmates' praise. Then her work is surpassed by Kyomoto, a reclusive classmate who stays away from school. Fujino becomes obsessed with getting better, burns out and quits drawing altogether. When the two girls finally meet, Fujino learns that Kyomoto has been her devoted fan all along. Bound by the same passion, they spend years drawing manga together, until a fateful event changes both of their lives.
GKIDS calls the film a love letter to the artistic process, hand-written in ink on paper. Koreeda directed, wrote the screenplay and edited it himself, and shot it in Nikaho City in northern Japan. Natsuki Deguchi, Aju Makita, Furi Nanase and Rokka Okada lead the cast, with music by Yuta Bandoh and cinematography by Senzo Ueno. Daiju Koide produced under his K2 Pictures banner.
Why Koreeda took it on
In the statement GKIDS shared when it acquired the film in March, Koreeda said he found the book by chance at a bookstore in Shinagawa Station, drawn in by the figure's back on the cover, and read it in one sitting that night. He said he could feel that Fujimoto simply could not move forward without making it, and that Nobody Knows had been that kind of work for him. After meeting Fujimoto, he remembers deciding on the way home that he had no choice but to make the film.
The source carries weight of its own. Fujimoto, the creator of Chainsaw Man, first published Look Back on Shonen Jump+, the online manga service from the publisher Shueisha, in 2021. According to GKIDS, it drew 2.5 million views on its first day, has been published in 37 countries and was nominated at the 2023 Eisner Awards, the top honors in American comics.
Our call
This one is Surfacing. A master of quiet family drama taking on one of the most loved manga of the decade is a rare pairing, and the film has already played Venice, Toronto and the British Film Institute (BFI) London Film Festival on its way here. If you are in a festival city, check the GKIDS film page, which lists screenings in Chicago, Philadelphia, Denver, Austin and Hawaii this fall. For more Japanese cinema, start with our Studio Ghibli starter guide, then see what GKIDS has coming in our Godzilla Minus Zero trailer breakdown. If you want to go deeper into world cinema on disc, our Criterion Collection explainer is the place to start.
Watch the animated version first
If you missed the 2024 anime, directed by Kiyotaka Oshiyama in his feature debut, GKIDS has it on a 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray Collector's Edition from the official GKIDS Store, with a making-of documentary, audio commentary, an interview with Haruka Nakamura and a 160-page art booklet. Seeing both versions side by side should be one of the more interesting double features of the winter. More updates are on the GKIDS YouTube channel.
