Photo courtesy of GKIDS
Join the Houston Cinema Arts Festival for a special screening of Look Back, a live-action feature film by Hirokazu Koreeda based on the celebrated coming-of-age manga by Tatsuki Fujimoto.
Filmed primarily in Nikaho City, Akita Prefecture across all four seasons, the movie features changing landscapes of spring, summer, autumn, and winter that play an integral part in the story.
Playing Fujino is Natsuki Deguchi, known for her leading roles in the Netflix series The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House and the films I Have a S/e/c/r/e/t/ and ALL GREENS. Aju Makita, who has starred in Happiness and VANISHING WORLD and appeared in numerous Koreeda works including AFTER THE STORM, takes on the role of Kyomoto. The younger versions of Fujino and Kyomoto are played by Furi Nanase and Rokka Okada, respectively. Bound by their devotion to drawing manga, Fujino and Kyomoto spend an irreplaceable period of growth and loss in their lives together.
Screening will take place on Friday, October 9, at 7 PM at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Brown Auditorium Theater. Click the button below to purchase tickets.
Synopsis
Fujino, a young girl with complete confidence in her talent for drawing manga, and Kyomoto, a reclusive classmate whose artistic ability far surpasses her own, are brought together by their shared passion for creating manga. As in the original work, the film follows the thirteen-year journey of the two characters from their elementary school days onward, portraying it with remarkable sensitivity and a vivid sense of youth.
DIRECTOR’S BIO & COMMENT – HIROKAZU KOREEDA
© Mikiya Takimoto, Photo courtesy of GKIDS
DIRECTOR BIO
Born in Tokyo in 1962. After graduating from Waseda University’s Faculty of Letters, Arts and Sciences, he joined TV Man Union and directed documentary programs. He made his feature film directorial debut in 1995 with Maborosi, which won the Golden Osella Award at the Venice International Film Festival. He has continued to create works focusing on family dynamics and social issues, including Nobody Knows, Like Father, Like Son, Our Little Sister, and Shoplifters, earning great acclaim both domestically and internationally. In 2018, Shoplifters won the Palme d’Or at the 71st Cannes International Film Festival. Koreeda has expanded his activities to include international co-productions, anchoring his worldwide reputation as a leading figure in Japanese cinema.
DIRECTOR COMMENT
On a return trip from Kyoto by bullet train, I was attracted by “the back” on the cover of a book, stacked up on display at a bookstore in Shinagawa station, and instinctively picked it up—that was how I first encountered the original manga Look Back. That night, I read it in a breath. The manga strikingly delivers the author’s determination. Although manga and film are different genres, as a fellow creator, I felt with a searing clarity that author Tatsuki Fujimoto simply couldn’t move forward without creating this work. For me, Nobody Knows was that kind of work.
Upon making the film adaptation, I tried to carefully depict the span of the time in which the two girls, Fujino, who draws the characters, and Kyomoto, who draws the backgrounds, meet as if destined to do so, and together nurture a strong bond. The film captures the two (four actors) for about a year and a half through the four seasons of the Tohoku region. As the story follows the growth of these two manga artists, sound is also a crucial element. The sound of them drawing manga, changing overtime, plays a major role in the film as a non-verbal form of expression, alongside the music.
The encounter with the original manga demanded a sense of determination from me—both as a creator and as a person—and gave me encouragement. I hope this film will be that kind of work for others as well.
ABOUT THE HOUSTON CINEMA ARTS SOCIETY (HCAS)
HCAS engages, enriches, and empowers Houston’s diverse cultures and communities by programming and supporting filmmaking and the arts. Our goal is to uplift the importance of film as an accessible device for storytelling and raising awareness; we work to empower regional and underrepresented filmmakers, and to showcase Houston’s diversity and cultural riches via community programs that highlight the intersection of film with other art forms and global issues.
ABOUT THE FESTIVAL
Houston Cinema Arts Society (HCAS) presents the 18th annual Houston Cinema Arts Festival! Under this year’s theme, My Eyes Are Playing Tricks on Me, the festival examines an increasingly complicated relationship between image and truth; from artificial intelligence, surveillance and political manipulation to memory, identity, performance and communities reclaiming the ability to author their own stories.
Across more than 35 feature films, six short-film blocks, filmmaker conversations, workshops, live performances, experimental cinema and multidisciplinary events, the 2026 festival brings acclaimed international work from Cannes and Venice into conversation with films and artists whose stories are inseparable from Houston.