Yabuki Machi 2013

Directed by Mitsuaki Saito

Fukushima is a geographic location and symbolic point. It is not only a place of infamy since the nuclear catastrophe. This is also where the director returns to the point that separates before and after, the childhood and the adult, the past and the future. Fukushima is the city that his father left, and also the city that Saito returned to. The serenity of the agriculture farmers reminds him that there is nonetheless a continuation of life and activity. The Buddhist ritual which accompanied the director's father on his last voyages not the end, but the beginning of reincarnation.