Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Broker continues the filmmaker’s ongoing exploration of chosen and makeshift families in all their fragility. This film about black market baby brokers is refreshingly honest about the lack of options for single mothers in Korea, as well as the prevailing attitudes toward those whom society deems “unfit” or families who aren’t conventional. There is a warmth in the cinematography and framing of the makeshift family unit that is contrasted by Kore-eda’s continued, sharp-eyed pessimism about systems and authority. With an incredible ensemble driving the film, the performances are all masterful and draw us further and further into the personal mysteries at the heart of the story. The fragmented pieces of the narrative don’t quite connect as masterfully as many of Kore-eda’s other films, but he still manages to find a genuinely moving core to his latest family drama.