Departures

In Cinemas: 15/10/2009 Watch Departures trailer

Academy Award® winner for Best Foreign Language Film, DEPARTURES is a delightful journey into the heartland of Japan as well an astonishingly beautiful look at a sacred part of Japan's cultural heritage. DEPARTURES follows Daigo Kobayashi (Masahiro Motoki), a devoted cellist in an orchestra that has just been dissolved and who is suddenly left without a job. Daigo decides to move back to his old hometown with his wife to look for work and start 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 “Nokanshi,” 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.

Departures

1 minute 1 second

Madman Films

Release Date: 15/10/2009
Languages: Japanese
Genre: Drama
Subtitles: English subtitles

Crew
Director: Yojiro TAKITA (When the Last Sword is Drawn, Ashura)
Screenplay: Kundo KOYAMA (creator of many TV series including The Iron Chef)
Executive Producer: Yasuhiro MASE
Producers: Toshiaki NAKAZAWA, Toshihisa WATAI
Music: Joe HISAISHI (Spirited Away, Howl?s Moving Castle, Sonatine)
Director of Photography: Takeshi HAMADA (Blood and Bones, Helen the Baby Fox)
Lighting: Hitoshi TAKAYA (Sonatine, Violent Cop)
Production Design: Fumio OGAWA (Silk)
Editing: Akimasa KAWASHIMA (Genghis Khan ? To the ends of the earth and sea)

Cast
Masahiro MOTOKI (The Birdman of China, GEMINI, GONIN) as Daigo KOBAYASHI
Tsutomu YAMAZAKI (Doing Time, Rikyu, Tampopo) as Shouei SASAKI
Ryoko HIROSUE (WASABI, Love Collage, Secret) as Mika KOBAYASHI
Kimiko YO (Café Lumière , Wait And See) as Yuriko UEMURA?
Takashi SASANO (KABEI ? Our Motehr, Love and Honor) as Shokichi HIRATA
Kazuko YOSHIYUKI (Glory to the Filmmaker!, Granny Gabai) as Tsuyako YAMASHITA

What the national critics are saying...

½ "DEPARTURES won this year's Academy Award® for best foreign film. And no doubt it deserved to... The film seems to me to be something very close to a masterpiece... At once simple and profound, DEPARTURES is a film of surpassing beauty and strangeness, bravely imagined and brilliantly accomplished, and in its final moments almost unbearably moving." Evan Williams, WEEKEND AUSTRALIAN

½ "I found myself crying... there's just so much affection and the performances all through are just beautiful. Beautiful. I love this film." Margaret Pomeranz, AT THE MOVIES

"Beautifully acted and classically filmed, DEPARTURES is a gentle, wise, immensely appealing film." David Stratton, AT THE MOVIES

"... don't forget the tissues - there wasn't a dry eye in the house." Hanna Mills, MX MELBOURNE