General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

How Dare You? (ふつうの子ども)

How Dare You? (ふつうの子ども, Futsū no Kodomo, literally "Ordinary Children") is a 2025 Japanese drama film directed by Mipo O and written by Ryo Takada, depicting the everyday lives and moral entanglements of a group of fourth-grade schoolchildren. It was released theatrically in Japan on September 5, 2025, distributed by murmur, with a running time of 96 minutes¹^•².

Key fact	Detail
Original title	ふつうの子ども (Futsū no Kodomo), released internationally as How Dare You?³
Director and screenwriter	Mipo O and Ryo Takada, their third collaboration after The Light Shines Only There (2014) and Being Good (2015)⁴
Japanese release	September 5, 2025; 96 minutes; distributed by murmur¹^•²
Child leads	Tetta Shimada as Yuishi Ueda, Ruri as Kokoa Miyake, Yota Mimoto as Haruto Hashimoto²
Adult cast	Yu Aoi (Keiko Ueda), Shunsuke Kazama (teacher Asai), Kumi Takiuchi (Fuyu Miyake)²
Casting method	Classmate roles were filled through auditions, with the children building their characters through workshops alongside the director²
Festivals (2025)	Zlin International Film Festival (children's feature competition), New York Asian Film Festival (North American premiere), Shanghai International Film Festival, Filmfest Hamburg³^•⁵

Spoilers

Story

The protagonist, Yuishi Ueda, is a 10-year-old fourth grader living with his parents, an ordinary boy who eats when he is hungry¹. He has recently become interested in his classmate Kokoa Miyake, a girl with a strong awareness of environmental issues who speaks up to adults without hesitation. When he tries to get close to her, he finds that Kokoa seems drawn instead to Haruto Hashimoto, the class's somewhat troublesome boy¹.

The three children start an "environmental activity" together, and it begins to roll in an unexpected direction¹. The New York Asian Film Festival synopsis describes Yuishi falling for Kokoa after she delivers a speech about environmental activism channeling Greta Thunberg; teaming up with the class troublemaker, he embarks on a self-righteous crusade and finds himself in a precocious love triangle, with the trio's antics spiraling into unintended consequences that force them to confront hard truths⁶.

Production

The film is a completely original story, the third time Mipo O and Ryo Takada worked together after The Light Shines Only There and Being Good⁴. Producer Wakana Kanno initiated the project because she wanted to make a film with children as protagonists, feeling that such works were scarce in Japan; she cited Sean Baker's The Florida Project (2018), which portrays children vividly while carrying a social message beneath, as an inspiration, and asked O to direct⁷.

O said that raising her own two children, then aged 10 and 5, changed her view of what makes children appealing: the short-term directness of chasing only what is in front of them. She had made a film about children, Being Good, in 2015 before giving birth, and after becoming a parent she wanted to portray children as they actually are⁷.

Working with children. Unlike O's previous film, which was shot on location in the regions, this film was shot near Tokyo, so she could meet the child actors every day. Filming could not run late into the evening because the cast was almost entirely children⁷. The classmates' roles were all chosen by audition, and each child built their character together with the director through shared workshop time².

The production committee credited the film with support from the Agency for Cultural Affairs' cultural arts promotion subsidy (Film Imagining Activity Support Program) through the Japan Arts Foundation¹. Production companies included Dig & Fellows and Potofu, with murmur as production organizer and distributor¹^•⁸.

Cast and crew

Tetta Shimada (born 2014, Saitama Prefecture) plays Yuishi; he debuted as an actor in the 2021 TBS drama #Family Wanted and appeared in O's previous film Living in Two Worlds (2024), making this his first lead film role⁴. Ruri (born 2013, Tokyo) plays Kokoa, her first substantial film acting after a debut in Missing Child Videotape (2025)⁴. Yota Mimoto (born 2012, Saitama Prefecture) plays Haruto; he drew attention playing the childhood of the protagonist in VIVANT (2023)⁴.

The adult cast surrounds the children with established performers: Yu Aoi as Yuishi's mother Keiko, Shunsuke Kazama as the homeroom teacher Asai, and Kumi Takiuchi as Kokoa's mother Fuyu². The crew includes cinematographer Hajime Tanaka, editor Etsuko Kimura, and composer Takuto Tanaka³.

Director's background

Mipo O entered the film industry as a script supervisor; her first feature screenplay, The Sakai's Happiness, won the Sundance/NHK International Filmmaker Award, and she directed her debut feature from it in 2006⁴^•⁶. The Light Shines Only There (2014) won the Best Director Award in the World Competition at the Montreal World Film Festival and was selected as Japan's submission for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film; Being Good (2015) received the NETPAC Award at the Moscow International Film Festival⁶. After having two children she returned to filmmaking, and Living in Two Worlds (2024) was nominated for the Golden Goblet Award at the Shanghai International Film Festival⁴^•⁶.

Reception and festival run

The film screened in the 2025 Zlin International Film Festival's International Competition of Feature Films in the Children's Category, at the New York Asian Film Festival (Japanorama section, North American premiere, July 11–27, 2025), in the Shanghai International Film Festival's "Master's New Work" section, and in Filmfest Hamburg's Michel Children & Youth official selection³^•⁵^•⁶.

Critics noted the film's departure from O's usual register. Mark Schilling of The Japan Times gave it 3 of 5 stars, writing that its light comic tone is completely different from the director's usual dark dramas and that the three young leads deliver professional performances⁸. Japanese critics at Cinema Today gave it a combined five-star rating; one review compared its quality to The Florida Project and praised the shift from handheld camera work in the first half to a fixed camera as the drama deepens, while another described the screenplay as a sharply satirical piece with parodic echoes of political movements⁹.

In Japan the film later became available for streaming on Amazon Prime Video, and it held an IMDb rating of 6.9¹⁰.

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026