Join us for a screening of Werner Herzog’s Family… | Little White Lies

Join us for a screen­ing of Wern­er Herzog’s Fam­i­ly Romance LLC

06 Mar 2020

Words by Little White Lies

Formal attire of Asian man and woman in traditional Japanese clothing.
Formal attire of Asian man and woman in traditional Japanese clothing.
We’ll be joined by the leg­endary film­mak­er for a Q&A on March 20.

The very def­i­n­i­tion of a renais­sance man, film­mak­er Wern­er Her­zog has been mak­ing mag­nif­i­cent films for over half a cen­tu­ry, span­ning gen­res, for­mats and chal­leng­ing the very notion of what is (or isn’t) cin­e­ma. We’ve been fans of his for a long time now, and are pleased to report his charm­ing lat­est, Fam­i­ly Romance LLC, is anoth­er exam­ple of a mas­ter at work.

For Yuichi Ishii, romance is a busi­ness. Fam­i­ly, friends, fol­low­ers – all are avail­able for hire. A man is hired to imper­son­ate the miss­ing father of a twelve-year-old girl; a woman stages a paparazzi mob to fol­low her on the streets of Tokyo; a moth­er hires a father to stand in at her daughter’s wed­ding. Herzog’s lat­est film is a unique ​‘stranger than fic­tion’ con­tem­pla­tion of lone­li­ness and fam­i­ly val­ues, inspired by the real Japan­ese phe­nom­e­non of com­pa­nies that pro­vide actors to imi­tate and imper­son­ate the roles of friends and fam­i­ly members.

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Two Asian adults, a man and a woman, standing outdoors with a coastal landscape in the background.

Shot on loca­tion in Japan, Herzog’s docu-fic­tion goes behind the scenes of the Fam­i­ly Romance, LLC com­pa­ny and its clients, fur­ther blur­ring the bound­aries of real­i­ty by cast­ing Yuichi Ishii, the real-life own­er, in the lead­ing role.

We’re delight­ed to be host­ing a spe­cial screen­ing of Fam­i­ly Romance, LLC with Mod­ern Films and The Ace Hotel in Shored­itch on March 20. The film will be intro­duced by Wern­er Her­zog him­self, and fol­low­ing the film, he will be in con­ver­sa­tion after the screen­ing with our Asso­ciate Edi­tor, Han­nah Wood­head. Tick­ets cost £7 and are on sale now.

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