True Mothers

DVD Features

Discs: 1

• Highest Rating
  "True Mothers covers an impressive amount of narrative ground, morphing from social issue film to domestic drama, romantic melodrama, violent urban thriller and at last a quiet reflection of cathartic confrontation."
  Nicholas Bell, Ion Cinema
• Highest Rating
  "Naomi Kawase's best film in years, TRUE MOTHERS is a deeply touching celebration of women who assume duties of love, support and compassion."
  Mina Takla, AwardsWatch
• Highest Rating
  "The latest film from the prolific Japanese director Naomi Kawase is a rewarding drama which weaves together knotted maternal bonds and textured character portraits. An elegant, absorbing piece of storytelling, its universal themes and a tone which conveys empathy without tipping into sentimentality...."
  Wendy Ide, Screen Daily
• Highest Rating
  "True Mothers is one of Naomi Kawase's best films to date, a thoughtful drama about the shame associated with unconventional motherhood."
  Alex Heeney, Seventh Row
• Highest Rating
  "[T]he film shimmers with beauty and sadness.... “True Mothers” wows in the end with an emotional banger of an ending that’s a truly devastating convergence of all the film’s threads. Kawase ties everything together beautifully...."
  Ryan Lattanzio, IndieWire
• Highest Rating
  "The Japanese auteur Naomi Kawase has returned with another of her highly distinctive, tremulously sensitive movies...there is a sustained emotional seriousness in this movie, with committed performances."
  Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
• Highest Rating
  "True Mothers is a sensitive, thoughtful exploration of a subject that far too often collapses into melodramatic pastiche."
  Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, Alliance of Women Film Journalists
• Highest Rating
  "Naomi Kawase's vision is clear-eyed and precise, extracting veritable emotion from each breathtaking landscape shot and poignant performance.... Much like Japan's excellent 2018 submission Shoplifters, True Mothers is a wistful ode to the infinite forms that family can take, a cogent assertion that there is no one-size-fits-all definition of motherhood. "
  MIa Vicino, Willamette Week
• Highest Rating
  "True Mothers is a thoughtful, delicate film that approaches a difficult subject matter with beautiful cinematography, realistic and realized characters, and a balanced approach to the story telling that will leave you speechless. Watch it."
  Watch or Pass
• Highest Rating
  " “True Mothers” is probably the most mainstream effort yet from Naomi Kawase.... “True Mothers” is sensitive and layered. "
  Ben Kenigsberg, The New York Times
• Highest Rating
  "True Mothers (Asa ga Kuru) is a true Naomi Kawase film: a lush visual reworking of parental angst and despair, offset by frequent interludes of communing with that great healer, Mother Nature."
  Deborah Young, The Hollywood Reporter
• Highest Rating
  "“True Mothers” depicts a suitably complex tale of motherhood from multiple perspectives, punctuated by masterful dramatic performances and non-linear editing choices that maintain a suspenseful pace that will evoke tears, but leave audiences with a lot to think about, and a lot to discuss."
  Andrew Shearer, Athens Banner-Herald
• Highest Rating
  "[A]n enormously life-affirming piece of work — a wryly funny folk tale of innocence and experience."
  Sean Burns, WBUR
• Highest Rating
  "Japan’s Naomi Kawase is among the tenderest of filmmakers... and her latest, “True Mothers,” is a fine example of this Cannes-honored director’s sensitivity and lyricism. They’re especially strong assets here, because this story of teen pregnancy, adoption, and belonging adapted from a novel by Mizuki Tsujimura is the kind of material that can easily lend itself to melodrama. In Kawase’s delicate hands, however, it breathes with an everyday poignancy. [H]er trademark interstitial grace notes of nature’s beauty, serve to burnish the deeply felt performances led by Nagasaku and Makita...."
  Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times