Family Romance, LLC

November 8, 2019
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Film past event
New York Premiere · Tokyo Stories: Japan in the Global Imagination

Friday, November 8, 7 PM

The latest by Werner Herzog—a self-financed micro budget meta-narrative feature about Japan’s unique “rent-a-family” industry—finds the well-traveled German director shooting in the Far East for the first time, working primarily in Tokyo with a cast of non-professional Japanese actors. Playing a version of himself in a film that continually blurs documentary with fiction, Family Romance’s actual founder Yuichi Ishii stars as a man hired out to play the missing father of 12-year-old Mahiro (Mahiro Tanimoto)—a job that becomes increasingly complicated when feelings of affection start to surface and role-playing gets entangled with reality. Along the way, Herzog explores tangents of other instances of willed self-deception and fantasy, including visits to a hotel run by humanoid robots and a funeral parlor where people can pay to experience their own memorials.

2019, USA, 89 min., DCP, in Japanese with English subtitles. Directed by Werner Herzog. With Yuichi Ishii, Mahiro Yanimoto.

Family Romance, LLC is a fascinating convergence of filmmaker and subject, providing the rare opportunity for Herzog to bury his observations in the material at hand.”

IndieWire

Part of Tokyo Stories: Japan in the Global Imagination

Tickets: $14/$11 seniors, students & persons with disabilities/$10 members

Box Office Policy

  • Friday, November 8, 2019
  • 7:00 pm