After Life

If you could take only one memory with you to eternity, which one would you choose?

Every Monday, a new group of recently deceased people check in to the office, to be greeted by staff members who explain, courteously, that they have died, and are now at a halfway house between their earthly existence and eternity.

They will be here a week. Their assignment is to choose one memory, one only, from their lifetimes: one memory they want to save for eternity.

Then a film will be made to reenact that memory, and they will move along, taking only that memory with them, forgetting everything else. They will spend eternity within their happiest memory.

At the end of the week, the recently deceased watch the films of their recreated happiest memories in a screening room. As soon as each person sees his or her own memory, he or she vanishes to whatever state of existence lies beyond and takes only that single memory with them.

Kore-eda repeatedly explored the themes of time, memory and death in his films. This thought-provoking tale, filled with poignant moments and stories, raises more spiritual questions than it answers.

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