11. I Wish
From his early years as a documentarian, Japanese director Hirokazu Koreeda has made a name for himself as a filmmaker with an intuitive understanding of the human condition - his films are consistently insightful and frequently moving. This background in documentaries is evident in I Wish, in which two young separated brothers living in different cities dream of reuniting and hear that, if they make a wish at the intersecting point where two new bullet trains pass, that wish will come true. Working from a rough script and heavily improvising with his cast, Koreeda delivers a touching drama which feels intimate and entirely naturalistic, yet at the same time his eye for wonderful compositions lend the film poetic feel which enhances rather than jars with the approach to realism.