Shinji Somai’s Moving (1993) is a remarkable portrait of adolescence beautifully restored in 4K, following Ren (Tomoko Tabata, giving easily one of the greatest child performances in film) as she is swept into a sea of uncertainty following her parents’ separation.

Desperately trying to keep her family together, Ren yearns for stability and happiness while lashing out at both home and school as her daily life becomes a bid to reclaim some type of agency. What Somai crafts is nothing short of miraculous: a child’s unanswered cries and silent mourning at her family’s dissolution, attempting to cling to a life that is going to be very different, replete with pain and confusion.   

A sweeping odyssey of self-discovery, Somai’s heartbreaking elegy to childhood finds young Ren having to grow up in the face of it all. What is so exceptional about Moving is its frank understanding of adolescent feeling and the emotional fluctuations borne out by loss and growing up, in a film that is as genuinely heartbreaking as it is funny and touching.  

A noted influence on celebrated and accomplished filmmakers, Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, Hirokazu Kore-eda, and Kiyoshi Kurosawa, among many others, Shinji Sōmai was a consummate filmmaker’s filmmaker, and Moving is one of his most remarkable achievements.  

Moving is being shown a brand-new 4K restoration, which won the Best Restored Film Award at the 2023 Venice Classics. A selection of the Un Certain Regard section at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival.