Astra FF 2021. Kodokushi & Post Mortem Berlin. The ferrymen of the dead
Two film sequences that I saw at Astra FF came close to my heart: the first, in “Then Comes The Evening”, with a grandma that walks her wedding dress up to the highest tree on a hill, where she lets it sway in the wind while begging the clouds to run dry, in order to save the crops from destruction. The second one is a sort of anti-shamanism, in “Kodokushi”; a lone elderly man who promises to recount all the prayers that he knows so it doesn’t rain on the day in which he hopes that he will meet his family again, sitting on a blanket and finally having a chance to play with his niece. I thought of all the magic tricks and superstitions that passed in front of my eyes, during my childhood, but none of them had this kernel made of pure love – what does it even truly mean for the rain to come after you’ve insistently called for it? Or the opposite? These films pull together the idea that the loneliness of elderly people has something metaphysical in its essence, that lone people have secrets which they only share with God Almighty; and then, there is the way in which we appreciate the act of death, be it as a definitive experience, be it as the start of a new journey.
Journalist and film critic, with a master's degree in film critics. Collaborates with Scena9, Acoperișul de Sticlă, FILM and FILM Menu magazines. For Films in Frame, she brings the monthly top of films and writes the monthly editorial Panorama, published on a Thursday. In her spare time, she retires in the woods where she pictures other possible lives and flying foxes.
