Generation 14plus

Capturing Dad

D: Ryota Nakano

Sat, Feb 9, 2013
5.30 pm

Japan 2012, 74 min, English subtitles

Her husband may be dying but the girls’ mother seems quite unmoved. She’s never been able to forgive him for having left her for another woman years ago. And so, rather than going herself she decides to send her two daughters, aged 17 and 20, to his deathbed. They are to bid their father a fitting farewell, even though they can barely remember him. But when the girls finally arrive their father has already died. The two young women stick out like sore thumbs in their summer dresses amongst all their black-clad relatives. At the funeral they find themselves having to cope with an onslaught of encounters including an overly friendly uncle, a hostile aunt and a blind grandmother who gets far too close for comfort. Luckily there’s also a delightful young half-brother, about whose existence the girls knew nothing at all. Time and again they find themselves asking the same questions: who was their father? And – are we like him? A film about family ties and the absence of relationships; about bidding farewell to the departed, anger and reconciliation.


Admission: 4 €

Group concessions: groups from 5 persons and up for 2,50 per person with prior registration by phone under 030 252 927 66 (daily 11 - 17h).

Reserved tickets can be collected at the Berlinale Center, Eichhornstraße 3, Postdamer Platz (from February 6 daily 11 - 18h).