To mark the release of Raphaëlle Yokota's La grande famille de Koreeda Hirokazu (March 20, 2025), the first French-language monograph on the filmmaker, ENS Éditions, in partnership with the Institut d'Asie Orientale (IAO), is organizing a book launch party hosted by Cléa Patin, followed by a screening of Shoplifting Family, Palme d'Or at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival.

Koreeda, a major figure on the world cinema scene, is often described as the filmmaker of filial bonds. A delicate goldsmith, Koreeda pays particular attention to aesthetic purity. His most famous chronicles – Nobody Knows, Like Father, Like Son, Shoplifting Family, Broker… – as well as his genre films – Air Doll, The Third Murder, Monster… – never cease to explore intimate fissures and chisel out the same themes: filiation, the family unit and its neuroses in today's Japan, and the discreet framework of everyday life. By adopting the point of view of populations that are usually invisible – women, children, the elderly – his films become vehicles for social change. Can Koreeda's filmography be analyzed solely through the prism of the family? Can cinema be a driving force for social change, and under what conditions? How does Koreeda's cinema succeed in making situations of social fracture visible and legible?

Raphaëlle Yokota is a PhD (Inalco, 2022), associate researcher at the IAO, historian of contemporary Japan, feminism and cinema.

Cléa Patin is co-director of the Tohu Bohu collection, lecturer at the Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3 in the Japanese Studies Department, and member of the IAO.