Would you choose your natural son, or the son you believed was yours after spending 6 years together? Kore-eda Hirokazu, the globally acclaimed director of "Nobody Knows", "Still Walking" and "I Wish", returns to the big screen with another family - a family thrown into torment after a phone call from the hospital where the son was born... Ryota has earned everything he has by his hard work, and believes nothing can stop him from pursuing his perfect life as a winner. Then one day, he and his wife, Midori, get an unexpected phone call from the hospital. Their 6-year-old son, Keita, is not 'their' son - the hospital gave them the wrong baby. Ryota is forced to make a life-changing decision, to choose between 'nature' and 'nurture.' Seeing Midori's devotion to Keita even after learning his origin, and communicating with the rough yet caring family that has raised his natural son for the last six years, Ryota also starts to question himself: has he really been a 'father' all these years...

Production Budget Analysis

The production budget for Like Father, Like Son (2013) has not been publicly disclosed.

CAST: Masaharu Fukuyama, Machiko Ono, Yoko Maki, Lily Franky, Jun Fubuki, Jun Kunimura DIRECTOR: Hirokazu Kore-eda CINEMATOGRAPHY: Mikiya Takimoto MUSIC: Takeshi Matsubara, Takashi Mori PRODUCTION: Fuji Television Network, BUN-BUKU, AMUSE, GAGA Corporation

Box Office Performance

Like Father, Like Son earned $334,616 domestically and $19,644,345 internationally, for a worldwide total of $19,978,961. International markets drove the majority of revenue (98%), indicating strong global appeal.

Profitability Assessment

Insufficient publicly available data to assess profitability.

INDUSTRY IMPACT

AWARDS & RECOGNITION

Summary: 23 wins & 47 nominations total

Nominations: ○ Asia Pacific Screen Award for Best Feature Film

CRITICAL RECEPTION

Like Father, Like Son received mostly positive reviews. On the film review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, it holds an approval score, with an average rating of based on reviews. The site's consensus reads, "Sensitively written, smartly directed, and powerfully performed, Like Father, Like Son uses familiar-seeming elements to tell a thought-provoking story." Metacritic gives the film a score of 73 out of 100, based on reviews from 33 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

Andrew Chan of the Film Critics Circle of Australia writes, "Essentially, Like Father, Like Son is one of those rare films that keep the audience totally engaged, thoroughly profound, fully emoted and ultimately refreshing. In the scale of perfect cinema, this stands quite close." On the website of The American Spectator, Eve Tushnet wrote that the film "has some of the striking Kore-eda trademarks: the extraordinary acting from the children; the symmetrical framing and musical pacing; and the shifts between long shots in which all the people look tiny and child's-eye shots where all the people look huge." Andrew Schenker of Slant Magazine wrote a lukewarm review, praising the cinematography but also saying, "The film scores all of its thematic points early [and] unfolds among fairly ordinary lines, hitting all of the expected moments, and simply waiting out the time until Ryota realizes the inevitable folly of his decision."

The film was the choice of Candice Frederick in IndieWire's 2018 list of the best Japanese films of the 21st century.