Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s 196-minute, Paris-set drama “All of a Sudden,” inspired by letters between a terminal breast cancer patient and a medical anthropologist, premiered in Competition at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival. NEON will release it in theaters later this
When Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s films arrive, they don’t just feel like stories. They feel like arguments you’re allowed to live inside. And with “All of a Sudden,” the Japanese director brings that same insistence on humanity to an unflinching question: how do you keep hope real when time is running out?
The 196-minute drama—described as talky. female-driven. and set up around an “infinitely braided” relationship between care and capitalism—returns Hamaguchi to familiar territory in spirit but not in shape.. For a movie that feels like a direct continuation of his previous work like “Drive My Car” and “Happy Hour. ” it also veers into places his films have “never gone before”: Paris. a softer counterworld to the environmental fatalism of 2023’s “Evil Does not Exist. ” and a persistent. almost contrite focus on comfort.
At the center is Mari, played by model and “Batman v.. Superman: Dawn of Justice” actress Tao Okamoto.. In one key moment. Mari diagrams the state of the world on a whiteboard during an impromptu talk—clear enough that a workable solution feels possible within viewers’ own lives. even if it may not arrive in hers.
The film draws its inspiration from letters shared between terminal breast cancer patient Makiko Mayano and medical anthropologist Maho Isono. and the way those letters echo through the story helps explain why so much of “All of a Sudden” seems designed to keep hope from turning into empty philosophy.
That message lands most forcefully inside a memory care unit of a Paris nursing home.. Facility director Marie-Lou Fontaine. played by “Benedetta” star Virginie Efira. has built her life around reconciling the clash between respectful dementia care and the realities of a system shaped by money.. The business model. the film argues. is biased toward keeping patients zombified in bed rather than encouraging engagement with the world while people still can.
Marie-Lou’s response is both personal and institutional.. Burnout and a willingness to dismantle her work/life balance are part of her decision to train her staff in Humanitude. a French methodology centered on dignity over death.. Even when colleagues support the idea, the time and cost required to implement it become a constant friction.
In the facility’s life. long. sometimes tempestuous staff meetings sit beside living memorials—attempts by Marie-Lou’s team to remind residents. residents’ families. and themselves that even severe Alzheimer’s cases are still rooted in a full. vibrant life before decline.. The film keeps pushing against the temptation to separate existence into “before” and “after. ” insisting instead on a continuous “during.” Life. it maintains. persists until the moment it doesn’t. and the final part of that argument is delivered with unusual gentleness: even inevitable deaths should feel as though they arrived all of a sudden.
Hamaguchi also changes the emotional weather through art and interruption.. In what the film frames as a chance encounter. Marie-Lou gets caught in a rainstorm after meeting a non-verbal Japanese teen named Tomoki. played by Kodai Kurosaki.. Tomoki’s grandfather Goro—Kyōzō Nagatsuka—arrives in Paris for a one-man show about the doctor who dismantled Italy’s abusive psychiatric system.. Mari becomes the show’s director. and in a standout moment of intimacy. Mari and Marie-Lou bond during a post-performance Q&A in which the two women have a heart-to-heart in Japanese. irritating the audience with how private the conversation feels.
The relationship that follows is “ostensibly platonic,” but it clearly isn’t just professional.. Marie-Lou spent time studying in Tokyo thanks to her love for Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahta—she even insists on “Pom Poko!”—and she’s drawn to Mari’s defiant attitude toward her cancer diagnosis.. Goro’s show carries a philosophy that only the dying are sensitive enough to appreciate the full scope of life’s beauty. an idea that lands directly on the ethos behind Marie-Lou’s approach to eldercare.
The film’s tension isn’t only romantic or clinical.. It’s structural.. By weaving their connection into conversations about work. pleasure. and what money takes from human beings—especially by keeping “states of being” sharply divided—“All of a Sudden” argues that this separation makes it easier for l’argent to swallow everything.. Mari’s line. “Not inside and outside — we must mix everything together. ” lands like a credo in a story that keeps insisting optimism and decline aren’t opposites.
Hamaguchi’s confidence also shows in how the movie itself seems to blur lines.. Though it’s described as segmented into three distinct acts. and further portioned across calendar days. the sense of alternating between institutional and human dramas steadily dissolves.. As Marie-Lou discusses Humanitude policy. the scenes build with pathos; as she grows closer to Mari. those moments begin to have a practical effect on how the nursing home functions.
Just how far Mari and Marie-Lou will let their bond go remains part of the film’s unresolved question. particularly because it won’t neatly reduce friendship and romance.. Desire stays present mostly as implication rather than spectacle.. Sex isn’t especially foregrounded. but the performance by Okamoto suggests Mari is left wanting more from Marie-Lou—keeping her illness from feeling like a convenient teachable moment.
The film builds toward a chaotic staging of Goro’s play. one that deliberately dismantles the line between viewers and participants. and among other dichotomies stresses that optimism and decline aren’t forces locked against each other.. Yet the review notes that Hamaguchi can become prescriptive, risking characters turning into vessels for the ideas the film pushes.
Even with reservations about how those gaps in the timeline can feel, “All of a Sudden” still closes by making its case with conviction: it grows more hopeful as it inches toward death, and it’s clear about its desired outcome.
“All of a Sudden” premiered in Competition at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival. NEON will release it in theaters later this year.
Ryusuke Hamaguchi All of a Sudden Cannes 2026 Tao Okamoto Virginie Efira Virginie Efira Humanitude Paris nursing home drama NEON Makiko Mayano Maho Isono Kodai Kurosaki Kyōzō Nagatsuka