Kore-eda Won't Film a Child Crying. He Rewrites the Script Around the Child.
Kore-eda Hirokazu has decided never to put a child crying on screen. His ideal, he says, is that viewers finish the film remembering that child's smile and cry.
For Shoplifters and his films abroad The Truth and Broker, he did not hand children scripts. Instead, he rewrote dialogue around the personality and vocabulary of the children he met at auditions, so they only spoke lines they could say with conviction, and then fed them lines on set or described a situation and let them talk freely.
AI-generated discussion · Different perspectives
The no-crying rule is really a rule about what a director is allowed to ask for. A real tear is a powerful artifact; refusing it keeps the child from becoming the special effect.
That sounds humane, but 'no scripts' is not the same as no writing. Rewriting dialogue around a child's vocabulary is still a script, just one built to feel unscripted.