Academy Award Winner for Best Foreign Language Film of the year, “Departures” is a delightful and sensitive journey into the heartland of Japan and an astonishingly beautiful look at a sacred part of Japan’s cultural heritage. An orchestra in Tokyo disbands, leaving Daigo Kobayashi unemployed.

With wife in tow, he sells his cello and moves back to his small hometown in Yamagata prefecture to look for work.

After spotting a Help Wanted ad featuring the word “departures,” he is excited about the prospect of a new career in the travel industry. Daigo is hired on the spot and is stunned to learn that he has entered the field of “encoffination” of corpses prior to cremation. Desperate to avoid failure Daigo pushes through his trepidation and begins his job. In Japan, morticians perform cleansing and beautifying services in the presence of the bereaved family. To his surprise, he discovers that he has an aptitude for the job, which teaches him about life and death. Too embarrassed to tell his wife about his new profession, Daigo hides his new life from his wife. Departures is a wonderful film that has comedy and emotion that deals with something that we all have to face sooner or later. Directed by Yojiro Takita.