Afterlife

Director: Hirokazu Kore-eda, Hirokazu Kore-eda

1998 / 119min / DCP

In a spartan, institutional-looking building, 20 or so people arrive to be briefed by the supervising staff. The arrivals are recently deceased; the staff, it transpires, are tasked with helping them pinpoint the one moment in their lives that they would most like to hold on to, supervising the filmed recreations of those moments in a studio facility, and then sending the dead off to eternity, where the memory they’ve chosen will be all they can recollect of earthly existence. A fantasy with no elaborate special effects, a deeply moving film without a trace of emotional exploitation, and an altogether lovely piece of work from Kore-eda that may surprise viewers who know him only from his later naturalistic dramas.