One Christmas Eve, three homeless people find a baby and go searching for her parents. The moving Christmas tale about finding a true family is one of the most important and unusual works by one of the greatest animators Satoshi Kon.
On Christmas Eve, three homeless people—Gin, a former bicycle racer now broke; a trans woman named Hana; and a runaway teenager Miyuki—find a baby in a pile of garbage. Distrustful of the police, they embark on a journey to find her parents, starting a sequence of strange events and encounters.
Much of Satoshi Kon’s work (Perfect Blue, Paprika, Paranoia Agent) explores the blurring of the lines between fantasy and reality, but in Tokyo Godfathers, co-directed with Shôgo Furuya, his main focus is on the disintegration of the family in contemporary Japan (although imagination still does play an important part in the story). A Christmas tale with subtle notes of tragedy and melancholy, the film was inspired by Peter B. Kyne’s bestselling novel The Three Godfathers, which has seen a number of screen adaptations.
Tokyo Godfathers
Directors: Satoshi Kon, Shôgo Furuya
Japan, 2003. 93 min. 16
