After Life

Name: After Life
Genre: Fantasy, Drama
Released: 1998
Duration: 119 min
Cast: Arata Iura, Erika Oda, Susumu Terajima, Takashi Naitô, Kyōko Kagawa

Hirokazu Koreeda19981h 59mFantasy, Drama

Why we chose it

What if you could keep only one memory from your whole life? Koreeda put that question to five hundred people and wove their answers into a story of a bureaucratic afterlife, whose Japanese title, “Wandafuru raifu”, nods to Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life”. You’ll start asking yourself too.

Synopsis

After death, the first stop is a modest office, where the dead turn up on a Monday morning. Each is given a room and a single task: to choose one memory from their whole life to keep for all eternity, and they have a few days to decide. Whatever they pick will be recreated, filmed and shown back to them, while everything else they remember disappears. It isn’t an easy choice.