Reality's Poetry: Kore-Eda Hirokazu Between Fact and Fiction (Comparison Between the Movie Director's Documentary and Feature Films) (Critical Essay‪)‬

One only needs to click into the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) to make sure that the three most famous fiction features by the Japanese director Kore-eda Hirokazu are Maborosi (Maborosi no hikari, 1995), After Life (Wandarufu raifu, 1998), and Nobody Knows (Dare mo shiranai, 2004). These three films have won the director the most critical acclaim and the most international awards. The inspiration for both Maborosi and After Life springs directly from Kore-eda's work as a documentary filmmaker (Mes and Sharp 208, 210). The third and perhaps most successful film, Nobody Knows, was also inspired by one of Kore-eda's TV-documentaries, but not in quite as direct a manner as the other two. There are, in other words, close ties between Kore-eda's fictions and non-fictions. But how, precisely, does Kore-eda apply his lessons learned as a documentary filmmaker when he directs fiction features? And what distinguishes his factual negotiation of an--at times--astoundingly similar material from the ways of his fictions? These are the central questions dealt with in this article. An exemplary school