Kore-eda Hirokazu Adapts ‘Look Back’ for Venice Competition

Kore-eda Hirokazu’s live-action adaptation of Fujimoto Tatsuki’s one-volume manga “Look Back” is set to premiere in Venice competition, with the director describing substantial changes to how the story’s drawing process and interior character moments reach the screen. This account is based on reporting by Variety.

According to Variety, the film follows classmates Fujino and Kyomoto as their ambitions as manga creators converge and diverge while they are still in school. Kore-eda said the project is his third adaptation from manga source material and that reading Fujimoto’s work during the pandemic prompted him to make the film.

For the production, Kore-eda reportedly researched mangaka at work, recorded the evolving sounds of drawing from individual pens to digital processes, and arranged manga instruction for the four girls in the cast, including weekly assignments. Nanase Furi plays Fujino in her school years. Variety

Kore-eda also said he made Fujino quieter in her competitiveness than in the manga and anime versions, converting internal monologues into dialogue and action to fit the live-action film’s naturalistic approach. “I transformed monologues into dialogues, and words into actions,” he told Variety. Variety

Impact assessment

The cast’s drawing training gives the production a more specific route to depicting manga-making, rather than using it solely as background. For viewers familiar with Fujimoto’s work, the altered monologues and softer outward characterization could change how they experience Fujino and Kyomoto’s relationship in the weeks around the Venice premiere. That difference may also shape how Venice audiences assess the film: both as a Kore-eda drama and as an adaptation of a widely known manga. These effects depend on whether the finished film makes its sound design, creative-process detail and revised characterization central to the viewing experience. Variety

Scenarios

Our outlook (informed speculation)

Most likely: If the conversion of monologue into dialogue and action remains prominent in the finished film, Venice discussion is likely to center on whether Kore-eda’s naturalistic performances preserve the relationship at “Look Back”’s core. That could make adaptation choices a key factor in its competitive reception, with critics and audiences comparing the live-action character treatment with the manga and anime versions.

Upside: If audiences see the researched depiction of drawing, sound and digital production as emotionally inseparable from the characters’ ambitions, the film could broaden interest in “Look Back” as a story about creative practice. That may encourage renewed attention to Fujimoto’s original manga alongside the adaptation in the weeks and months after Venice.

Downside: If viewers judge Fujino’s softened competitiveness and reduced interior monologue as weakening a defining tension, discussion could divide more sharply between audiences approaching the film as a Kore-eda work and those prioritizing fidelity to the manga and anime. That split would be most visible if premiere responses repeatedly frame the live-action realism as a trade-off against the source’s characterization.

What to watch next

Venice premiere reactions may show whether critics and festival audiences focus on Fujino and Kyomoto’s revised characterization, the translation of monologue into action, and the film’s portrayal of manga-making. Any publicly announced distributor, territory, platform or release date after the premiere would provide the next concrete indication of how “Look Back” will reach audiences beyond the festival.