Meaning for ordinary lives

Japanese film director Hirokazu Koreeda with Chinese critic Zhi An at a Beijing event.[Photo provided to China Daily]

Hirokazu Koreeda, who makes films that mainly focus on domestic relationships, was a big draw at the recent Beijing International Film Festival. Yang Yang reports.

Japanese film director Hirokazu Koreeda was recently in the Chinese capital for the Beijing International Film Festival, at which eight of his films were shown.

Eager Chinese fans lapped up the offerings, and tickets for the movies including Our Little Sister, After the Storm and Still Walking, sold out online in a flash.

Hirokazu, who is often compared by film critics to Japanese director Yasujiro Otsu, makes films that mainly focus on domestic relationships - between mother and father, father and children, mother and children, husband and wife and sisters and brothers - by capturing ordinary life and presenting the rhythm of real life - slow, sometimes even boring, but filled with tension.

One of his films that was well received by Chinese critics is Still Walking, Hirokazu's most personal film that he did as tribute to his late mother.

The movie depicts a day in the life of the Yokoyamas. Here, family members gather for a commemorative ritual for their eldest son.

The director says he wanted to express the view that "there are so many 'too late' moments in one's life".

Seven years after his mother died, Hirokazu published a novel based on the script of the movie. Now the Chinese version of Still Walking is out.

Recently, on a beautiful spring evening, dozens of Chinese were waiting for him at the Kubrick Bookstore in Beijing's Moma.