About

‘Our Little Sister, follows the lives of four sisters over four seasons in the seaside village of Kamakura. All in their twenties, Sachi (Haruka Ayase), Yoshino (Masami Nagasawa), and Chika (Kaho) live together in an old house passed down from their grandmother. When the death of their estranged father takes them to Yamagata for the funeral, they meet their shy teenage half-sister Suzu (the fresh-faced Suzu Hirose)—the daughter of the now-deceased woman who stole their father away from their family—and quickly decide to adopt her.

The humble seaside setting and the plot, almost shocking in its simplicity, is the perfect pretext for Koreeda’s quintessential examination of time and memory. Like collected dewdrops, its collated moments of quotidian pleasures reawaken the senses—a bike ride shown in slow motion through a tunnel of sakura blossoms pulsates with the sensorial pleasure of everyday-ness—while giving rise to an awareness of the impermanent nature of an individual life, a family unit, and a town.

“What interests me is not only the beauty of the scenery of Kamakura—or of the four sisters,” Koreeda explained once in an interview, “but also . . . the beauty that arises from the realization . . . that the town, and the time there, continue even when we are gone.”’ Film Comment