Mitsuko Delivers (2011)

Mitsuko Delivers is a Japanese movie written and directed by Yuya Ishii. It premiered at the Pusan International Film Festival on October 6, 2011 and was released by Showgate in Japan on November 5, 2011.

The film stars Riisa Naka as a young woman named Mitsuko who maintains her optimistic outlook and never hesitates to help others even through she’s 9 months pregnant without a husband, home, or money.

Instead of burdening her parents—who think she’s living happily in California with her American boyfriend—she returns to a row house where she lived as a child. When she arrives, she discovers that the landlord (Miyoko Inagawa) is bedridden and her childhood friend Yoichi (Aoi Nakamura) is struggling to keep his father’s unpopular eatery open.