Like Father, Like Son
A successful architect learns his six-year-old son was switched at birth, and two families must decide whether blood or years of care makes a father.
Cannes Film Festival, Jury Prize, 2013
A driven, affluent architect and his wife discover that their six year old son was swapped with another baby at the hospital, and that their biological child has been raised by a warmer, poorer family. The two households begin to meet, and the father is forced to weigh genes against the years of daily fathering he took for granted.
The film sets nature against nurture and asks what actually makes a parent, dwelling on attachment, class, and a man's slow recognition of his own coldness. It gives a clinician a patient meditation on bonding and what a father is. It won the Jury Prize at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival.
Director
Hirokazu Kore-eda
Hirokazu Kore-eda is a Japanese film director, born in 1962. He is known for quiet, observational dramas about ordinary family life, often watching how parents and children shape one another over time. Several of his films weigh biological ties against the bonds people choose, and return to memory, absence, and grief. Shoplifters (2018), about a makeshift household living on the margins, won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.
Details
- 2013
- Japan
- Japanese
- Film