Given that Werner Herzog unveiled two documentaries at the Tribeca Film Festival, Meeting Gorbachev (co-directed by Andre Singer, it released on May 3) and Nomad: In the Footsteps of Bruce Chatwin, you might naturally assume that Family Romance, LLC was a doc too. The film certainly has documentary elements. Shot in Japanese and with a Japanese cast, the film focuses on a thriving Japanese company that hires actors to pose as friends and family members. The story follows a man (played by Yuichi Ishii, the company’s actual founder) who is hired to impersonate the missing father of a …

Leave it to Werner Herzog to deliver something fresh and unexpected, as the auteur and Oscar-nominated filmmaker often does. This time around, we are treated to a fascinating drama that Herzog shot in Japan with Japanese actors, and a story that centers on a cultural reality that many in the West might find odd and not easily understandable. That's the sort of niche that Herzog's films like to live in because the filmmaker does such a remarkable job of taking foreign concepts and making them accessible. Here's hoping the same goes for his upcoming drama, Family …