Broker

Palme d’Or winner Hirokazu Kore-eda is back with a funny and moving film about an unlikely family unit on the run with an abandoned baby, starring K-pop singer IU and Parasite’s Song Kang-ho in his Cannes Best Actor–winning role.

Making his second film outside his homeland, after 2019’s France-set The Truth, Japanese auteur Kore-eda (Shoplifters, MIFF 2018; Like Father, Like Son, MIFF 2013) heads to South Korea for a story of two law-breaking misfits who find themselves thrown into a makeshift family. Debt-ridden laundry shop owner Sang-hyun (Song) hatches a plan with Dong-soo (Gang Dong-won), who works at a ‘baby box’ where mothers can anonymously drop off unwanted newborns, to make some money through the black-market infant trade. But their plan is complicated when their stolen baby’s young mother (Lee Ji-eun, aka IU) returns and joins them on the road – while a pair of detectives (Doona Bae, Cloud Atlas; and Lee Joo-young, Itaewon Class) give chase.

Broker tempers its caper-like story with all of the trademark warmth, humanity and humour that have made Kore-eda one of the era’s most beloved auteurs. In turn, Song – who nabbed the Best Actor gong at this year’s Cannes – delivers a standout performance of great nuance and sensitivity. Much like the works that have come before it, this film reaffirms Kore-eda’s status as Japan’s master humanist, capturing the many and magical ways that individuals can be bonded by blood or circumstance.

“Gentle, sad, and funny, Broker continues Kore-eda’s tradition of handling tough subject matter with a light touch … One of the highlights of this year’s Cannes.” – Vanity Fair