FAMILY ROMANCE, LLC
Director: Werner Herzog Run Time: 89 min. Release Year: 2019
Starring: Mahiro Tanimoto, Miki Fujimaki, Takashi Nakatani, Yuichi Ishii, Yuka Watanabe
Family Romance is a Tokyo-based company that offers the perfect stand-ins for absent family, friends or admirers – available to rent for any occasion. In a fictionalised take on this real-life company, Herzog follows founder Yuichi Ishii as he helps his clients make their dreams come true. But when the mother of 12-year-old Mahiro hires Ishii to impersonate her missing ex-husband, the line between performance and reality threatens to blur.
Shot by Herzog himself, the film blends fiction storytelling with documentary-style visuals for a striking meditation on truth and artifice in the age of loneliness.