Kore-eda's Look Back live-action makes its debut at Busan Film Festival

The Look Back live-action has already been seen in Korea. The film directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda was presented on October 7 at the Busan International Film Festival, as part of its gala section, with a press conference in which the director spoke about his relationship with the original manga by Tatsuki Fujimoto.

It is the first live-action adaptation of a work by Fujimoto, the author of Chainsaw Man. And, from what Kore-eda said, he didn't come to it because it was a global hit: he stumbled upon the manga by chance in a bookstore.

A manga that wasn't meant for film

"Look Back is a popular work, but I didn't read it thinking about making a movie. I found it by chance in a bookstore," the director explained. When he read it at home, he says, he was shocked.

What moved him wasn't just the story, but the questions it raised for him as a creator: why people write stories, why they create, why he makes films. "I think all creators carry that responsibility," he stated.

That initial impression is what he wants to bring to the screen. Kore-eda acknowledges that manga and film don't express things in the same way, but he assures that during filming he kept one idea very much in mind: why human beings do something, why we create.

The story of two girls who became each other's world

Look Back follows two girls who draw together over the course of four seasons and end up becoming each other's world. The manga, a single volume, was published in 2021 and already had an animated adaptation that hit theaters in 2024.

Kore-eda's version marks a different leap for the work: taking it out of the realm of animation and bringing it to live actors, with everything that implies for such an intimate story. The Japanese director, known for titles like Shoplifters or Monster, is a heavyweight name for that first time.

For now, the film has no confirmed release date outside of festivals. What is clear after its stop in Busan is that Kore-eda hasn't approached it as a job for hire: he feels it as a story that gave him back something he had lost. "It was an opportunity to reconnect with cinema," he said.