Family Romance, LLC

“A self-financed micro budget meta-narrative feature about Japan’s unique ‘rent-a-family’ industry—finds the well-traveled German director shooting in the Far East for the first time, working primarily in Tokyo with a cast of non-professional Japanese actors. Playing a version of himself in a film that continually blurs documentary with fiction, Family Romance’s actual founder Yuichi Ishii stars as a man hired out to play the missing father of twelve-year-old Mahiro (Mahiro Tanimoto)—a job that becomes increasingly complicated when feelings of affection start to surface, and role-playing gets entangled with reality. . . .  Family Romance, LLC is a fascinating convergence of filmmaker and subject, providing the rare opportunity for Herzog to bury his observations in the material at hand” (Japan Society).