All of a Sudden Trailer: Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Latest Masterpiece Opens This November

There may be no living filmmaker on a better run than Ryusuke Hamaguchi. With Happy Hour, Asako I & II, Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, Drive My Car, Evil Does Not Exist, Gift, and now All of a Sudden, the Japanese director has brought a staggering level of humanity and insight to life’s mysteries—simply unparalleled in modern cinema. His latest, which won Best Actress for Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto at Cannes, will now come to TIFF and NYFF, followed by a November 25 theatrical release. Ahead of that roll-out, the first U.S. trailer has arrived for Japan’s Best International Feature entry.

Here’s the synopsis: “Director of a care facility for the elderly, Marie-Lou strives to introduce an innovative care philosophy based on listening and respecting residents’ dignity, despite resistance from part of her staff. Her encounter with Mari, a Japanese theater director battling cancer, will profoundly reshape her path. By forming a deep, supportive friendship, the two women join forces in a shared struggle to make the impossible possible.”

Leonardo Goi said in his Critic’s Pick review, “Few directors working today have so consistently and perceptively interrogated the possibilities and limits of language as the ultimate conveyor of that kind of truth, and if All of a Sudden stands as the most humanist of Hamaguchi’s features, it is because it shifts that prerogative toward the body. A film that’s full of erudite conversations—about duty of care, the dangers of capitalism, the need to dream up alternatives to the world we’ve inherited—this is, perhaps most importantly, a profoundly tactile experience. Bodies take center stage, shot by Alan Guichaoua not as decomposing chrysalises but vessels that can communicate oceans of feeling.”

See the trailer below.