Distinguished Authors
Cannes 2025: author Kazuo Ishiguro on film, adapting his books and becoming Homer
Kazuo Ishiguro’s mother was in Nagasaki when the atomic bomb was dropped.
When Ishiguro, the Nobel laureate and author of Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go, started writing fiction in his twenties, his first novel, 1982’s A Pale View of Hills, was inspired by his mother’s stories, and his own distance from them. Ishiguro was born in Nagasaki but, when he was five, moved to the UK with his family.
A Pale View of Hills marked the start of one of the most lauded writing careers in contemporary literature. And, now, like most of Ishiguro’s other novels, it is a film, too.
Kei Ishikawa’s film by the same name premiered on May 15 at the Cannes Film Festival in its Un Certain Regard section. The 70-year-old author has been here before; he was a member of the jury in 1994 that gave Pulp Fiction the Palme d’Or. “At the time it was a surprise decision,” he says. “A lot of people booed.”
Ishiguro is a film watcher and sometimes maker, too. He penned the 2022 Akira Kurosawa adaptation Living.
Movies are a regular presence in his life, in part because filmmakers keep wanting to turn his books into them. Taika Waititi is currently finishing a film of Ishiguro’s most recent novel, Klara and the Sun (2021).
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