Only a handful of directors truly get me excited any time they have a new project coming up. Quentin Tarantino. Paul Thomas Anderson. Gareth Evans. Park Chan-Wook. And also on that list is Japanese director Hirokazu Koreeda. Best known for complicated family dramas like Nobody Knows, Still Walking, and 2013's excellent Like Father, Like Son, Koreeda is back with his next film, Umimachi Diary, and now we have the first trailer for the manga adaptation.
Starring Haruka Ayase, Masami Nagasawa, Kaho, and Suzu Hirose, the film centers on three very different sisters who attend their estranged father's funeral and meet their 13-year-old step-sister for the first time. When the young girl makes an impression on the oldest sister they decide to care for her themselves.
While this trailer is in Japanese and I can't understand any of it, it's safe to assume conflict will arise between the sisters because Koreeda doesn't do anything simple. Hopefully this will get a stateside release some time this year, but every time I've seen a Koreeda movie it was at one of our film festivals first. Umimachi Diary opens in Japan on June 13th.
