Film
Bureaucracy meets the afterlife in Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda’s After Life, a gently paced drama concerned with a simple question: which single memory from your life would you choose to remember for eternity? Every week, a group of recently deceased people arrive at an unassuming redbrick building – a purgatory of sorts – where they meet counsellors tasked with helping them move on. To do so, they will need to select the one moment of their lives they will bring into the afterlife (all other memories will be wiped out). Conversations between counsellor and client are calm and meditative, touching on the purpose of life and what, at the end of it, we will truly value. That – alongside After Life’s sumptuous shots of a surrounding autumnal, sun-dappled garden – makes the filmAfter Life a welcome prompt to rest and contemplate. Rebecca Liu
