10 Current Directors Who Just Can't Seem To Miss
9. Hirokazu Kore-eda
Filmography: I Wish, Like Father, Like Son, Our Little Sister, After the Storm, The Third Murder, Shoplifters, The Truth
A name that may fly under the radar for some, Japanese maestro Hirokazu Kore-eda is yet to enjoy the privilege of a critical dud in the past decade, having received great - and often highly acclaimed - notices for his work.
The 57-year-old has admittedly not strayed far from a central theme of familial dramas - legal thriller The Third Murder nonwithstanding - but it is in the way he has differentiated each of his films with shaded nuances in regards to the strengths of those bonds that has made him a fine observer of human nature.
Shoplifters won Kore-eda the Palme d'Or at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival and earned him a nomination for Best International Feature Film at the Oscars, while his latest effort The Truth represents his first work outside both his home country and native tongue. It was scheduled to hit screens last month, before the shutdown presented a stumbling block - but let's hope that its latest portrait of a fractured family coming to terms with themselves is worth the wait.