True Mothers

Satoko and her husband Kiyokazu have struggled for years with unsuccessful fertility treatment. With encouragement from an adoption association, they decide to adopt a boy and name him Asato. Six years later, Satoko has left her job to devote herself to her husband and son, and the household has settled into a quiet routine. That life is disrupted when a young woman named Hikari contacts them, claiming to be the child's birth mother and demanding money. Satoko chooses to meet her face to face rather than simply give in.

The film is directed by Naomi Kawase, who wrote the screenplay with Izumi Takahashi. It followed Radiance and The Moon in her filmography and came before Yakushima's Illusion, and it is the sixth of her features listed here. Hiromi Nagasaku plays Satoko and Arata Iura plays Kiyokazu, with Aju Makita as Hikari. Miyoko Asada, Hiroko Nakajima and Tetsu Hirahara appear in supporting roles among a credited cast of 22.

True Mothers runs 140 minutes and was released in October 2020. On IMDb it holds a rating of 7 out of 10 from roughly 2,300 votes, and on TMDB 7.4 out of 10 from about 90 votes. A critics' rating of 7 out of 10 from 45 reviews places it close to the audience scores, suggesting a broadly consistent response to the film.