Japanese director Hamaguchi Ryūsuke's film "All of a Sudden" (released in French as "Soudain") premiered at the 79th Cannes Film Festival in May 2026, where its two leads, Virginie Efira and Okamoto Tao, were named joint winners of the Best Actress award. The three-hour-16-minute feature explores the intense relationship that forms between two women after a chance meeting in Paris.
The screenplay was loosely inspired by the 2019 book "Kyū ni guai ga waruku naru" (A Sudden Turn for the Worse), a collection of 20 letters exchanged over three months between philosopher Miyano Makiko and medical anthropologist Isono Maho. Miyano, who had undergone cancer treatment for eight years, died in July 2019 at age 42, weeks after the correspondence ended.
Hamaguchi reimagined the correspondents as Marie-Lou (Efira), a French cultural anthropologist running a progressive seniors' home in France, and Mari (Okamoto), a Japanese playwright who studied philosophy in France. The bilingual characters meet when Mari hands Marie-Lou a flyer for her experimental play in a Paris park; they reconnect at the theater days later and talk through the night.
The film retains the book's philosophical focus on contingency and boundaries — between caregiver and patient, healthy and ill, self and other, life and death — while adding a cross-cultural dimension. Marie-Lou struggles with staff resistance at her care facility, while Mari discloses she could "take a sudden turn for the worse" medically. Their encounter becomes a catalyst for each to navigate existing crises.
Hamaguchi, known for dialogue-driven films where restrained conversations suddenly deepen, structures the first half around the women's rapidly deepening bond. The narrative incorporates Mari's one-man play about deinstitutionalization, performed by actor Gorō (Nagatsuka Kyōzō), and a subplot involving a lost child, Tomoki (Kurosaki Kōdai).
A French production company approached Hamaguchi after he had begun considering an adaptation, prompting a "drastic reworking" that situated the story across France and Japan. The multilingual production involved co-producers Cinéfrance Studios, Arte France Cinéma, Office Shirous, Bitters End, Heimatfilm, Tarantula, Gapbusters, and Same Player.
The source correspondence ended with Miyano writing, weeks before her death: "I would be happy if someone were to continue this life of mine that will be ending prematurely." Her final letters expressed wonder at "this world full of the beginnings of life with others, through fate and circumstance."
Director Hamaguchi Ryūsuke Explores Boundaries, Connections in “All of a Sudden”
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