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Alex Heeney / September 9, 2024

TIFF 2024 Film Review: Guillaume Senez’s A Missing Part

Alex Heeney reviews Belgian filmmaker Guillaume Senez’s third feature film, A Missing Part screening in the TIFF Special Presentations section. The film is about a French man searching for his Japanese daughter in Tokyo after years of separation because joint custody isn’t possible.

Listen to our TIFF 2024 podcast on bicultural daughters and their absent fathers Subscribe to the podcast to stay updated

Read all of our TIFF 2024 coverage.

Still from Guillaume Senez's A Missing Part, photo courtesy of TIFF. A 12-year-old Japanese girl holds up her phone to take a selfie with her white father beside the sea.
Still from Guillaume Senez’s A Missing Part, photo courtesy of TIFF

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In Guillaume Senez’s film A Missing Part, French taxi driver Jay (Romain Duris) lives in Tokyo, where he is married to (but separated from) a woman he pays alimony to but whose whereabouts – and that of the daughter they share – are unknown. His Japanese wife effectively kidnapped his daughter when she was three, granting her full custody by Japanese law. He’s been searching for his daughter for eight years. Just as he plans to sell his house and return home to France, he gets a lead that could change his plans entirely.

This sensitively made feature from Senez is a character study about a father who isn’t allowed to be a father, an unjust system that won’t allow joint custody, and the people caught within it. Carefully observed, Senez finds moments of joy and grace in an often brutal world and asks what sacrifices a father would make to see his daughter – when long-term and short-term goals may be at loggerheads.

Listen to the podcast

Listen to the podcast on Bi-cultural daughters and their absent fathers at TIFF 2024 for a more detailed discussion of the film A Missing Part.

On the podcast, I discuss the films A Missing Part, Winter in Sokcho, and My Father’s Daughter.

Filed Under: Essays, Film Festivals, Film Reviews Tagged With: Belgian Cinema, TIFF 2024, TIFF 2024 Best Sales Titles, Toronto International Film Festival, World Cinema

About Alex Heeney

Alex is the Editor-in-Chief of The Seventh Row, based in San Francisco and from Toronto, Canada.

« Older Post
TIFF 2024 Film Review: Koya Kamura’s Winter in Sokcho
Newer Post »
TIFF 2024 Ep. 5: Bicultural daughters and their absent fathers: My Father’s Daughter, Winter in Sokcho, and A Missing Part

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