After Life

Like his previous drama Maborosi (1995), Hirokazu Kore-eda's After Life is a brilliant meditation on death and memory. The premise of After Life is simple: over the span of a week, twenty-two souls arrive at a way station (which looks like an old junior high school) between life and death, where ...more

A peculiar and uniquely moving examination of life after death, Hirokazu Kore-Eda's After Life dispenses with conventional notions of punishment and reward and offers instead a version of the hereafter dominated by reflection and contemplation, death as a moment in which to come to terms with all that's come before and move on. Kore-Eda turns what could have been a parlor game exercise -- the issue of choosing a memory to preserve for eternity -- into a profound examination of what matters most. ...more