Hackney Lullabies wins Berlinale Today Award

Japanese film maker Kyoko Miyake made her first film on her parents’ video camera around the suburb of Chiba (‘the Essex of Tokyo’). Now, years later, her film Hackney Lullabies has gained her international recognition with victory at the prestigious Berlinale Talent Campus awards in Berlin last month.

Getting inherently protective mothers to agree to appear on film with their young children is no easy task, but this proved no problem for Miyake, 34, who has succeeded in creating a heartfelt, visually stunning piece that apparently left the judges at Berlin blubbering into their notepads.

The film intersperses narration by young mothers from Israel, Ukraine, Jamaica and beyond who recall the nursery rhymes that they learnt as kids, how they try to convey them to their children in their native languages while living in the UK – all illuminated by a bright and summery Hackney landscape.

Featuring locations like the Abney Park Church and Ridley Road Market, the area is represented in stunning cinematography. However, the real stars are the mothers – many of them single – who are remarkably candid.

One mother voices her concern that she cannot truly communicate to her daughter in English but she finds solace in singing lullabies. Another mother from Italy can only remember one song from her father and we see a bittersweet juxtaposition of a baby being soothed by the lyrics to an ancient fighting song.

Miyake has diverse interests – before film making she spent time as a journalist in Tokyo and a history student at Oxford focusing on British witchcraft – but she is keen to film her next project in East London so look out for more soothing cinema that definitely won’t send you to sleep.