Cannes Film Festival: Broker, Adopt a Family

The team of Broker ©YesICannes.com

Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Broker tells a moving family story that crystallises around an innocent little being, an abandoned baby destined to be sold to an adoptive family.

Cannes Film Festival 2022: Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda, winner of the 2018 Palme d’Or with Shoplifters, returns to the Croisette for the eighth time with the moving Broker, which once again looks at the theme of family through babies abandoned in baby boxes in South Korea.

Abandoned baby for sale

In Broker, Hirokazu Kore-eda tells the moving story of a family that forms around a small innocent being, an abandoned baby destined to be “sold” to an adoptive family. In South Korea, anonymous drop-off boxes collect babies abandoned by desperate mothers, giving two accomplices the idea of baby trafficking. But the mother comes back and, even if she refuses the baby, she wants to take part in the sale and get her share of the sale. Then, off we go on a road…

Road movie and gentle thriller

In the guise of a road movie and a gentle crime thriller, Broker travels around South Korea in a beat-up van with a load of Good Stars: two child traffickers – the brilliant Song Kang-ho (Parasite) and Kang Dong-won -, a young prostitute (Lee Ji-eun, aka K-Pop superstar IU), a murderer at times, who wants a share of her baby’s sale. The van is closely followed by a police captain, Doona Bae (The Host) and her deputy, who hope to catch them red-handed. Joining the untamed crew is a cheeky eight-year-old football fan in search of father’s hugs. The road is so paved with good feelings that we can guess a happy future for the newborn.

Adopt a family

As the journey progresses, a real family is created around the baby and the magic happens, the emotion is born as the baby passes from more and more loving arms. Even the captain is moved… With restrained emotion, Hirokazu Kore-eda evokes the traumas of abandonment, the hopes of adoption, the mysteries of filiation, without falling into the heartbreaking family melodrama. And the bonds of friendship that develop between the characters: small-time thugs, prostitutes, orphans, who create a family of solidarity, not a family of blood, but a chosen family.