Rebirth

After her affair with a married man ends, Kiwako abducts his six-month-old baby. She raises the child as her own and is not caught for four years. When she is, the child goes back to her real family, but that house never feels like her own. Years later, as an adult, Erina arrives at a similar place in her own life and has to look at her past. Izuru Narushima adapted the film from Mitsuyo Kakuta's novel. The telling defines nobody in a single word: the woman who took the child is not a monster, and the family she returns to is not a refuge. What the film is really about is not the crime but how it spreads across a child's entire life. It won ten prizes at the 35th Japan Academy Awards, including best film and best director.