Monsters and closets: Behind Japan’s groundbreaking new film exploring queer childhoods

The greatest knowledge we can pass on is empathy,” said John Cameron Mitchell, the filmmaker behind the totemic queer musical Hedwig and the Angry. He was speaking in his capacity as the chair of the ’s Queer Palm jury last year, while awarding the prize to Hirokazu Kore-eda’s . The first Japanese film to win the award, it is a moving and formally ambitious story of two young schoolboys who find, in each other, young and innocent love. “We as queer people – who cannot and do not wish to conform – honour this film because its maker understands that the outsider is a shaman,” Cameron Mitchell continued. “The outsider possesses secret knowledge that is vital to the evolution and survival of our society.”