Shinya Ueno

An alcoholic and his wife explore a beach site in a strange afterlife. Here they meet a number of odd characters who remind them of their past.

The tired man standing on the platform is 27-year-old Ayumu Ueno. Facing an unwelcome trip to his childhood home, he goes to light a cigarette. What he finds in his pocket, however, is a jujuba fruit. The shiny red skin brings back vague memories of his second mother, Rèn Shìróng. Born in the Sichuan province of China, jujuba fruits were her favorite snack. At the time, he didn’t want to call her “Mom,” so at his father’s suggestion, she became “Sis.” As he thinks back on Sis, past and present meet, drawing us into a world neither dream nor reality. –"People can never really understand each other. Thinking back, I feel this way because of my former mother-in-law. That time, when Kansai dialect and Sichuan Chinese flew back and forth around me and I called my mother Sis, is recreated on expired 8 millimeter film. The expiration date of the film used is the same year that she walked out on us."

We see a woman lying down. She awakens from a dream of a festival she visited in her youth to a scene that feels familiar. Reminiscing on her first love, her marriage, giving birth, and meeting the love of her life, she wanders for a while. Was the place she met him again a dream, or was it Heaven? Was the one she met her first love, or the love of her life? This is a story about love, and about one woman.