World Premiere

Every house has a front door and behind every door is a family drama.

For main protagonist Kanata, he and his mother have relocated from Fukushima to a new area, sans the father who they lost during an earthquake when he was a child. As he is wont to do, he pushes people away, uncertain of how to talk about his old man until he meets Riku, the son of his much-admired homeroom teacher. Gradually won over by Riku’s brightness, Kanata finally begins to open up and discovers another boy living in the shadow of his father.

Faraway Family is a story about trauma and its inheritance, all wrapped in a 3/11 storyline that ably links dramas from Kanata’s past and present to show how the ideal of a “family” is often out of reach and we can never really know what is going on in a person’s life until they let us in. [Jason MAHER]