Intimations of Mortality

Japanese filmmaker Chie Hayakawa's second film, Renoir, took me back for a while to Avinash Arun's Marathi debut feature Killa (Fort, 2014) and Sumanth Bhat's Kannada language first film Mithya. All three movies have 11-year-old protagonists who are grappling with mortality.

- NAMRATA JOSHI

Japanese filmmaker Chie Hayakawa's second film, Renoir, took me back for a while to Avinash Arun's Marathi debut feature Killa (Fort, 2014) and Sumanth Bhat's Kannada language first film Mithya. All three movies have 11-year-old protagonists who are grappling with mortality. While Killa and Mithya deal with loss—father in the former and both the parents in the latter—and the immutable changes in life that accompany the profound pain and grief, Renoir has Fuki (Yui Suzuki) coming of age while her terminally ill father Keiji (Franky Lily) moves between the hospital and the home and mother Utako (Hikari Ishida) has it tough balancing the demands of her job with being her husband's caregiver.