SLF Digital Film Academy focuses on Japanese cinema
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Japanese filmmaker Yojiro Takita’s drama film ‘Departures’, a tale of a newly unemployed cellist takes a job preparing the dead for funerals, will be screened at 4 pm on September 25 at the Sri Lanka Foundation. Organised by the Digital Film Academy, a discussion with the participation of Prof. Patrick Rathnayake will be held and it is moderated by well-known filmmaker Sudath Mahadivulwewa.
Loosely based on Coffinman, a memoir by Aoki Shinmon, the film follows a young man who returns to his hometown after a failed career as a cellist and stumbles across work as a nohanshi—a traditional Japanese ritual mortician. Daigo Kobayashi is a devoted cellist in an orchestra that has just been dissolved and now finds himself without a job. Daigo decides to move back to his old hometown with his wife to look for work and start all over.
He answers a classified ad entitled ’Departures’ thinking it is an advertisement for a travel agency only to discover that the job is actually for a «Nokanshi» or «encoffineer,» a funeral professional who prepares deceased bodies for burial and entry into the next life. While his wife and others despise the job, Daigo takes a certain pride in his work and begins to perfect the art of ‘Nokansh’ acting as a gentle gatekeeper between life and death, between the departed and the family of the departed. The film follows his profound and sometimes comical journey with death as he uncovers the wonder, joy and meaning of life and living. The film stars Masahiro Motoki, Ryōko Hirosue, and Tsutomu Yamazaki in the lead.