Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on May 2013

Japanese director Hirokazu Koreeda has already tasted success at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival. His film Nobody Knows, a study of four children living alone in a Tokyo apartment was selected for the competition for the 2004 edition of the French festival. Its 14-year-old star Yuya Yagira became the first Japanese to win the Best Actor award that year.

Now Koreeda will have another shot at the Palme d’Or when the cinema elite descend on the resort town May 15-26. His just-completed feature Like Father, Like Son [pictured] stars author/actor Lily Franky as a loving father who finds the boy he has raised for six years is not his biological son, due to a hospital mix-up. It is one of 19 films in the “official selection” program.

Fellow Japanese director Takashi Miike is heading to France with his thriller Shield of Straw. Other high profile entries in the competition include Roman Polanski’s Venus in Furs, Steven Soderbergh’s Behind the Candelabra on the entertainer Liberace, and the Coen Brothers’ folksinger drama Inside Llewyn Davis.

After having been invited countless times, Steven Spielberg finally cleared up his schedule enough to serve as this year’s jury head. “My admiration for the steadfast mission of the festival to champion the international language of movies is second to none,” the Lincoln director said.

Like Father, Like Son will open in Japan on Oct 5.