Details and tickets purchase information: 
https://harvardfilmarchive.org/calendar/sincerity-2025-08
Harvard students admitted free to regularly priced shows.

Directed by Naruse Mikio. 
With Irie Takako, Kato Teruko, Etchan
Japan, 1939, 35mm, b/w, 67 min. 
Japanese with English subtitles

The heart of this film is the friendship between two elementary-school girls, Tomiko and Nobuko, who discover that, prior to both their births, the father of the latter was in love with the former’s mother. The rambunctious Nobuko is played by Etchan, who was something of a manufactured child star of the period (though she certainly doesn’t lack talent). Naruse’s stronger affinity is with Tomiko (played by the less well-known Kato Teruko), who is retiring and serious and feels things deeply. For the adults in the film, life is nothing but a tragedy that is never acknowledged. Sincerity is set during Japan’s late-thirties militarization, which places a larger framework of impending disaster around the personal story. Only the two girls offer some hope of getting through all the grimness—remaking the world in accordance with justice and personal desire. The scenes between them, in which Naruse’s style is at its most lyrical, offer a sun-drenched image of utopia. – Chris Fujiwara

Harvard Film Archive special film series FLOATING CLOUDS… THE CINEMA OF NARUSE MIKIO co-sponsored by the Reischauer Institute